his eyes often gave the lie to his lips, when he
used to say to the silent neighbours, "We shall soon see him back at
Moorside." Had his belief in his Ludovic's innocence, and his trust in
God that that innocence would be established and set free, been so
sacred, that the blow, when it did come, struck him like a hammer, and
felled him to the ground, from which he had risen with a riven brain? In
whatever way the shock had been given, it had been terrible; for old
Gilbert Adamson was now a confirmed lunatic, and keepers were in
Moorside--not keepers from a mad-house, for his daughter could not
afford such tendence--but two of her brother's friends, who sat up with
him alternately, night and day, while the arms of the old man, in his
distraction, had to be bound with cords. That dreadful moaning was at an
end now; but the echoes of the hills responded to his yells and shrieks;
and people were afraid to go near the house. It was proposed among the
neighbours to take Alice and little Ann out of it, and an asylum for
them was in the Manse; but Alice would not stir at all their entreaties;
and as, in such a case, it would have been too shocking to tear her away
by violence, she was suffered to remain with him who knew her not, but
who often--it was said--stared distractedly upon her, as if she had been
some fiend sent in upon his insanity from the place of punishment. Weeks
passed on, and still she was there--hiding herself at times from those
terrifying eyes; and from her watching corner, waiting from morn till
night, and from night till morn--for she seldom lay down to sleep, and
had never undressed herself since that fatal sentence--for some moment
of exhausted horror, when she might steal out, and carry some slight
gleam of comfort, however evanescent, to the glimmer or the gloom in
which the brain of her father swam through a dream of blood. But there
were no lucid intervals; and ever as she moved towards him, like a
pitying angel, did he furiously rage against her, as if she had been a
fiend. At last, she who, though yet so young, had lived to see the
murdered corpse of her dearest friend--murdered by her own only brother,
whom, in secret, that murdered maiden had most tenderly loved--that
murderous brother loaded with prison-chains, and condemned to the gibbet
for inexpiable and unpardonable crimes--her father raving like a demon,
self-murderous were his hands but free, nor visited by one glimpse of
mercy from Him who r