st despair, and passion scarcely human, had made such fierce
ravages on his face and form, in that one night, that his companions
in misfortune shrank affrighted from him as he passed by. His eyes were
bloodshot and heavy, his face a deadly white, and his body bent as if
with age. He had bitten his under lip nearly through in the violence of
his mental suffering, and the blood which had flowed from the wound had
trickled down his chin, and stained his shirt and neckerchief. No
tear, or sound of complaint escaped him; but the unsettled look, and
disordered haste with which he paced up and down the yard, denoted the
fever which was burning within.

'It was necessary that his wife's body should be removed from the
prison, without delay. He received the communication with perfect
calmness, and acquiesced in its propriety. Nearly all the inmates of the
prison had assembled to witness its removal; they fell back on either
side when the widower appeared; he walked hurriedly forward, and
stationed himself, alone, in a little railed area close to the lodge
gate, from whence the crowd, with an instinctive feeling of delicacy,
had retired. The rude coffin was borne slowly forward on men's
shoulders. A dead silence pervaded the throng, broken only by the
audible lamentations of the women, and the shuffling steps of the
bearers on the stone pavement. They reached the spot where the bereaved
husband stood: and stopped. He laid his hand upon the coffin, and
mechanically adjusting the pall with which it was covered, motioned
them onward. The turnkeys in the prison lobby took off their hats as it
passed through, and in another moment the heavy gate closed behind it.
He looked vacantly upon the crowd, and fell heavily to the ground.

'Although for many weeks after this, he was watched, night and day, in
the wildest ravings of fever, neither the consciousness of his loss,
nor the recollection of the vow he had made, ever left him for a
moment. Scenes changed before his eyes, place succeeded place, and
event followed event, in all the hurry of delirium; but they were all
connected in some way with the great object of his mind. He was sailing
over a boundless expanse of sea, with a blood-red sky above, and the
angry waters, lashed into fury beneath, boiling and eddying up, on every
side. There was another vessel before them, toiling and labouring in the
howling storm; her canvas fluttering in ribbons from the mast, and her
deck thronged wi