"How did she die?" Randolph asked again. "You know your father, Randolph," the chaplain replied. "Cannot you conceive the position was too much for her? And her kindred were imprudent. She pined away. But she was an angel. We all loved her. If the devotion of those around her could have made up for the affection which should hallow her situation, surely she were living now." His hearer mused again for some time in silence, thinking of his dream; and it produced its usual effect of soothing his excitement, and tranquillizing his spirits. "Come, Mr. Riches," he said, "let us seek my sister. We must not leave her desolate too long." But the chaplain laid his hand on his old pupil's arm, saying: "One moment, Randolph; let me detain you one moment. Let me play the master again. What we have been discoursing of will be best forgotten. And oh! let it not be remembered in one fatal sense! Let not these sad events be the foundation of evils yet to come! You spoke of a vow. Such are often wrongly demanded and rashly given. Pride lingers on the bed of death, and bequeaths itself to its successors. Vengeance, unappeased, requires satisfaction by the hands of its heir. So hatred is handed down for ever, and rancour and strife made perpetual. Pray Heaven the vow you speak of requires none of these things! Pray Heaven, that if haply it do, it will be revoked and forgotten!" "A parent's curse," said Randolph in a hollow voice, "is a terrible thing." "To him!" the chaplain exclaimed. "To him it is, indeed, a terrible thing, and to his children, if it impels them into wrong-doing. There is no power in man to curse, my dear pupil, and surely Heaven is deaf to all such imprecations." Alas! Polydore might as well have reasoned with the foaming waves beneath him. Randolph listened in respectful silence, but entirely unconvinced. As law is silent amid the din of arms, so is reason in the conflict of passions. Few sources have been more fruitful of evil than the pledges extorted by the dying. The giver succumbs absolutely to an obligation he ought never to have undertaken, allows himself no discretionary power, yields nothing to the alteration of circumstances, and acts as if the behest were imposed by certain foreknowlege and unerring wisdom. There is no absolution from a death-bed promise, and no chancery to qualify its mischievous engagements.