"Hold, sir!--hold!" cried the roused man. "You now speak daggers to me! I could hae borne this when you were here last; but ye hae unmanned me--ye hae made me familiar wi' him, the king o' terrors, wha waits for me. I know him in his worst shapes. He is nae langer hideous to me; and, being his friend, I canna be my dochter's faither and guardian! Why cam you here to revive a struggle that was past? My mind was made up. Owre the pages o' that book, my resolution was fixed; now you wad re-resolve me back to my doubt, my pain, my insufferable agony, by bringin up into my mind the tender image o' a sufferin, sorrowin, starvin dochter. My Margaret--my Margaret!--her mother's image--the pledge o' a love dearer than life----" The door opened, and the young woman, who had been listening at the back of it, rushed in and flung herself on the bosom of the agonised man. "O father!" she cried, "I ken everything. Yer dreadfu purpose has been revealed to me. Ye intend to tak awa yer ain life, which my mother, yer beloved Agnes, on her death-bed, bade ye preserve for my sake. But ye canna do that without takin also mine. Yer death will be my death. I hae already seen yer bleedin body in my dreams--the image haunts me like a spirit, and leaves me nae rest. The doctor says true--ye will kill me before yer dreadfu purpose is fulfilled; but if, in God's will, I should be left when ye are awa, wha is to guard me, wha is to comfort me--without freends, without means, and without health?" The scene now presented to me transcended anything I had ever seen during my long intercourse with suffering humanity. The excited girl clung with a firm grasp to the neck of her parent, and sobbed intensely; while he, struggling to be liberated, and holding away his face to the back of the bed, groaned and appealed for relief in broken, guttural, half-choked aspirations to Heaven. I saw his eyes turned to the throne of mercy, and big tears rolled down his rugged cheeks. In my anxiety to aid this struggle, and assist him to the return to his natural love of life and duty to his God, I was afraid to interfere with the sacred service of a bursting heart, turned in its agony to the only source of consolation and healing virtue; while, if I allowed this opportunity to escape, I might not have another for adding a mortal's means and energies (sometimes God's instruments) to the workings of nature, and the silent but powerful voice of religion speaking from the innermost recesses of his moral constitution.