As the man uttered these terrible sentences, he shuddered as if horror-stricken at the impending fate of this wronger of the living and the dead, and it was clear to the girl that he would have freely averted the doom, had such a thing been possible. “Men and cliques,” said he, “have used me for their purposes--have, like this ghoul, wormed themselves into my confidence, and then, when their ends were served, have ever abandoned me to wretchedness and misery. “Rosicrucians, and all other delvers in the mines of mystery, all dealers with the dead, all whose idiosyncracies are toward the ideal, the mystic and the sublime, are debtors to nature, and the price they pay for power is groans, tears, breaking hearts, and a misery that none but such doomed ones can either appreciate or understand. Compensation is an inexorable law of being, nor can there, by any possibility, be any evasion of it. The possession of genius is a certificate of perpetual suffering. “You now know why I am sad, O girl of the good heart. I am weak to-night; to-morrow will bring strength again. But, see! the golden sun is setting in the west. Alas! I fear that my sun is setting also for a long, long night of wretchedness.” “You speak well, man of the sore spirit,” replied the girl. “You speak well when you say the sun is setting; but you seem to forget that it will rise again, and shine as brightly as he does to-day! He will shine even though dark clouds hide him from us; and though you and I may not behold his glories, some one else will see his face, and feel his blessed heat. Old men tell us that the darkest hour is just before the break of day. I bid you take heart. _You may be happy yet!_” “The precise formula of the Mysterious Brotherhood!--the very words uttered by the dead mother who bore me! How did this girl obtain it? When? Where? From whom?” Beverly started, gazed into the mighty depths of her eye, was about to ask the questions suggested, but forbore. “We may all be happy yet,” said she; “for the Great Spirit tells me so!” And she crossed her hands upon her virgin breast--breast glowing with immortal fervor and inspiration; and she threw, by a toss of the head, her long, black sea of hair behind her, and stood revealed the perfect incarnation of faith and hope, as if her upturned eyes met God’s glance from Heaven. The old chief and the boy at his side said nothing, but each instinctively folded his hands in the attitude of confidence and prayer. The combined effect of all this upon the young man was electric. The singular incident struck him so forcibly that he rose to his feet, placed his hand upon the girl’s head, uplifted his eyes and voice to heaven, and, from the depths of his soul, responded “Amen, and Amen.”