"True, true," he cried; "I hae a dochter, and a better never sacrificed her ain thochts and feelins to the comforts o' a faither. The idea o' leavin her, young, faitherless, poor, and full o' sorrow, in the midst o' a bad world, has before this" (lowering his voice) "brought down that rebellious hand from this throat. But, alas for the inconsistency and mutability o' man's fancies!--dearly as I love that creature, and she is now my only comfort, my very affection for her sometimes sinks me deeper into that sorrow which produces the dreadfu purpose o' takin awa my ain life; for I think--oh! how weak is man's proud reason, when the heart is broken wi' grief!--that an auld parent under the ban o' poverty is a burden to a child. His death (so in these unhappy moments do I think) relieves the unhappy bairn o' twa evils--that o' toilin maybe in vain to support him, and that o' witnessin age, decrepitude, pain, misery, and want, wringin frae his shrivelled and diseased body groans o' agony, strikin the heart o' his child wi' mair pain than would be caused by the knell o' his death." He now sank his face in the bedclothes, which he grasped with a spasmodic hand, and groaned so deep and loud that the sounds might have reached the passage. I again heard a noise from that quarter, as if of stifled sighs and hysterical sobs. I was placed between the groans of a father bent against his own judgment on self-destruction, and the terrors and griefs of a daughter listening to the horrible recital of her parent's designs against his life. The loneliness of the house, and the solitude of the unhappy pair--with no one to aid the young woman, in the event of any appalling extremity to which the unnatural purpose of her father might drive him--struck me forcibly. I had no recollection of ever experiencing a scene of grief so peculiar, with such fearful and uncertain issues, so irremediable and heart-stirring. The groans of the one and the sobs of the other seemed to vie with each other in the effect they produced upon me; but, great as the pain of the father was, the sufferings of the daughter, perhaps as peculiar and touching as any that could be conceived, engaged to the greatest extent my sympathy. It was my duty and wish to try to remove the fundamental cause of all this suffering; and I waited the end of the paroxysm of the father's sorrow in order to resume the conversation.