Long before the period of our first acquaintance with them had Jervis and Elster begun to feel and acknowledge to each other the grievous mistake they had made in the training of their son, bestowing upon him their abundant affection, untempered by that judicious and habitual exercise of controlling will, without which, parental love but forestalls the very ends it has nearest at heart--the good and the happiness of the offspring. Gold can not be too rich, where only ornament is the object in view; but it needs to be alloyed with silver to be made firm and consistent enough to meet the ends of uses. Their love, from very richness, had been of too soft and yielding a nature to fashion the character of their child into the thing of beauty for which its maker had designed it. Now, had he returned, as it were, from the dead, to upbraid them with the wrong they had done him. All unwittingly had he ministered the rebuke; perhaps, on being restored to his normal self, should never remember what he had done. Yet, for that very reason, all the more bitter was the reflection, since it showed how deep the wrong was, if his innermost soul could be cognizant of it and speak out in his vindication, while his more external nature was as yet incapable of knowing or comprehending it. What remorse they felt at the thought of the sore affliction, which, by their folly, they had brought upon his young life; what good resolutions they formed, looking to atonement and recompense; what prayers they offered up for forgiveness of the past, and for guidance in the future--must be left to the heart and conscience of every judicious parent to conceive. After some minutes the boy resumed, still with his eyes closed, the windows of the tenement shut, but the light from within shining through the translucent walls. "Some one is here, who goes and comes as goes and comes none else. Her step is light, her touch soft, her voice gentle and low. I love to have her near me. Where she is can come no evil thing. Wild dreams stand at the door, waiting for her to go away, when they come slipping in to dance around me, to laugh at me, to point the mocking finger at me--sometimes, to scowl and frown upon me. They are after Sprigg, to vex and frighten him, and think that I am he. But the moment she comes back, out they go skipping by another door--make all the haste they can to get away. They are afraid of her, as is every evil thing, because she is as God, in the beginning, made her--all love and truth.