le seated there.

The Captain had placed before him on the table a large Bible, borrowed
from the landlady. He never travelled, to be sure, without his own
Bible; but the print of that was small, and the Captain's eyes began to
fail him at night. So this was a Bible with large type, and a candle was
placed on either side of it; and the Captain leaned his elbows on
the table, and both his hands were tightly clasped upon his
forehead,--tightly, as if to shut out the tempter, and force his whole
soul upon the page.

He sat the image of iron courage; in every line of that rigid form there
was resolution: "I will not listen to my heart; I will read the Book,
and learn to suffer as becomes a Christian man."

There was such a pathos in the stern sufferer's attitude that it spoke
those words as plainly as if his lips had said them. Old soldier, thou
hast done a soldier's part in many a bloody field; but if I could make
visible to the world thy brave soldier's soul, I would paint thee as I
saw thee then!--Out on this tyro's hand!

At the movement I made, the Captain looked up, and the strife he had
gone through was written upon his face.

"It has done me good," said he simply, and he closed the book.

I drew my chair near to him and hung my arm over his shoulder.

"No cheering news, then?" asked I in a whisper.

Roland shook his head, and gently laid his finger on his lips.

CHAPTER VIII.

It was impossible for me to intrude upon Roland's thoughts, whatever
their nature, with a detail of those circumstances which had roused in
me a keen and anxious interest in things apart from his sorrow.

Yet as "restless I rolled around my weary bed," and revolved the renewal
of Vivian's connection with a man of character so equivocal as Peacock;
the establishment of an able and unscrupulous tool of his own in the
service of Trevanion; the care with which he had concealed from me
his change of name, and his intimacy at the very house to which I had
frankly offered to present him; the familiarity which his creature
had contrived to effect with Miss Trevanion's maid; the words that had
passed between them,--plausibly accounted for, it is true, yet still
suspicious; and, above all, my painful recollections of Vivian's
reckless ambition and unprincipled sentiments,--nay, the effect that
a few random words upon Fanny's fortune, and the luck of winning an
heiress, had sufficed to produce upon his heated fancy and audacious
temper