For some days, Joe dwelt in a frame of greater tranquillity than he had experienced since the commencement of his religious "awakenings." But the calm was a deceitful one; and was but the prelude to a more terrific tempest than had ever yet raged in the breast of the young victim to the ideal. Joe heard descriptions from the pulpit of the sectaries, of the unspeakable ecstasy of true believers; and reflected that his own feelings bore scarcely any resemblance to such highly-wrought pictures. Gradually, he felt it utterly impossible to conceal from himself the tormenting conviction that he had never received that amazing change of nature which he had been taught, so energetically and sanguinely, to expect as the fruit of his "act of faith." Instead of the "heavenly joy of assurance," which the preachers described,--Joe could not conceal from himself the fact that his nearest approaches to inward joy and calm,--fitful as they were,--resulted from the effort to _assure himself_; and this seemed too strained a mental state, he thought, to be termed "heavenly joy of assurance." Then, again, he was conscious that he had not the mental purity that he had heard described as one of the certain marks of regeneration. And this, soon, hurried him into a whirlpool of inward distraction;--for, instead of attributing the irritability and peevishness which now frequently agitated him to their real source,--the exhaustion of his nervous system by extreme asceticism,--the poor boy set them down, in his helpless and pitiable ignorance, to the inheritance of a nature that involved him, still, in the awful sentence of divine wrath. The tortures of disappointment thus augmented the distraction of doubt; and, at length, Joe was unable to quell his uneasiness for another moment by resorting to the act of self-delusion recommended by the "Revivalist,"--and called by him "the act of faith." Worn out, and jaded, with his daily, hourly, and almost momentary attempts to palm the fiction, anew, upon his understanding, Joe gave up the practice of "the act of faith" altogether, with a feeling of weariness and disgust and self-degradation too bitter for description! The prostration of the youth's corporeal strength accompanied this distressing mental conflict. Dame Deborah began to watch the hectic flush on the cheek of her beloved foster-child with an aching heart; and, for the first time, entertained fears, that Time, so far from curing him of his errors, would only serve to mark his early grave. She would have interdicted his future attendance on the meetings of his religious associates; but the drooping state of his health deterred her from crossing his will, lest she should hasten the catastrophe which she began, in sadness and sorrow, to anticipate.