d not tear myself away until I had
once more visited the neighborhood of the dear old school-house.

I cannot think without emotion of that moonlight night when I lay
down beside the marble pillar which tender hearts had caused to be
placed there, "In loving memory of D.M." Oh, my father, how true it
is that "the way of transgressors is hard!" I thought my heart
would break as I lay there on the cold earth and wept the bitterest
tears I ever shed.

If I could but have caught sight of Dr. Brier, or felt the
motherly touch of Mrs. Brier's hand upon my shoulder,--if I could
but have heard the ring of Howard's or Martin's voice in the
play-ground, I felt as if the evil within me would have taken
flight and I should have risen up a regenerated man.

But I was alone. Dead! dead! And I went away with my heart cold and
sad, and my future all dark and purposeless.

A twelvemonth ago I fell in with some Shetlanders who were about to
start on a whaling cruise, and, as the expedition promised plenty
of adventure and excitement, I joined them.

Three months after we left Shetland, we were fast in the ice. For
nine months and more we have been almost starving, and have had to
endure bodily suffering in other respects of a most severe kind.

I have written the foregoing part of my story at intervals, and I
would now bring it to a conclusion, for the ice is breaking up, and
we have before us our last chance.

Literature has been very scarce on board, and I had only brought
one book with me. It was Howard Pemberton's Bible. I found it in
the coat I had taken accidentally on the morning I left Blackrock
school, and I never parted with it, hoping I might be able to
restore it some day, for I found it was a sacred relic given to him
by his father, and bearing in its cover his portrait and a copy of
the dying words he spoke to Howard.

That book became my friend, and it led me to recognize a friend in
its Divine author. I had striven in vain to save myself from
myself. This book pointed me the way. I should never have read it,
however if it had not been for the kind sympathy of our captain. A
nobler man, or a truer Christian, I never met.

But our captain died, and my strength gradually failed from
privation. I cannot tell you here all that happened, but I must
refer you to a diary