ther its rest nor its silence. I was startled, as I entered the
cell of the hapless poet, by a shout of laughter from a neighbouring
room, which was answered from a dark recess behind me, by a fearfully
prolonged shriek, and the clanking of chains. The mother and sister of
Ferguson were sitting beside his pallet, on a sort of stone settle which
stood out from the wall; and the poet himself, weak and exhausted, and
worn to a shadow, but apparently in his right mind, lay extended on the
straw. He made an attempt to rise as I entered; but the effort was above
his strength, and, again lying down, he extended his hand.

"This is kind, Mr. Lindsay," he said; "it is ill for me to be alone in
these days; and yet I have few visitors, save my poor old mother and
Margaret. But who cares for the unhappy?"

I sat down on the settle beside him, still retaining his hand. "I have
been at sea, and in foreign countries," I said, "since I last saw you,
Mr. Ferguson, and it was only this morning I returned; but believe me
there are many, many of your countrymen who sympathize sincerely in your
affliction, and take a warm interest in your recovery."

He sighed deeply. "Ah," he replied, "I know too well the nature of that
sympathy. You never find it at the bedside of the sufferer--it
evaporates in a few barren expressions of idle pity; and yet, after all,
it is but a paying the poet in kind. He calls so often on the world to
sympathize over fictitious misfortune, that the feeling wears out, and
becomes a mere mood of the imagination; and, with this light, attenuated
pity of his own weaving, it regards his own real sorrows. Dearest
mother, the evening is damp and chill--do gather the bedclothes round
me, and sit on my feet; they are so very cold and so dead, that they
cannot be colder a week hence."

"O Robert, why do you speak so?" said the poor woman, as she gathered
the clothes round him, and sat on his feet. "You know you are coming
home to-morrow."

"To-morrow!" he said--"if I see to-morrow, I shall have completed my
twenty-fourth year--a small part, surely, of the threescore and ten; but
what matters it when 'tis past?"

"You were ever, my friend, of a melancholy temperament," I said, "and
too little disposed to hope. Indulge in brighter views of the future,
and all shall yet be well."

"I can now hope that it shall," he said. "Yes, all shall be well with
me--and that very soon. But, oh, how this nature of ours shrinks from
diss