olution!--yes, and all the lower natures too. You remember, mother,
the poor starling that was killed in the room beside us? Oh, how it
struggled with its ruthless enemy, and filled the whole place with its
shrieks of terror and agony. And yet, poor little thing! it had been
true, all life long, to the laws of its nature, and had no sins to
account for, and no judge to meet. There is a shrinking of heart as I
look before me, and yet I can hope that all shall yet be well with
me--and that very soon. Would that I had been wise in time! Would that I
had thought more and earlier of the things which pertain to my eternal
peace! more of a living soul, and less of a dying name! But, oh, 'tis a
glorious provision, through which a way of return is opened up even at
the eleventh hour!"

We sat round him in silence; an indescribable feeling of awe pervaded my
whole mind, and his sister was affected to tears.

"Margaret," he said, in a feeble voice--"Margaret, you will find my
Bible in yonder little recess; 'tis all I have to leave you; but keep
it, dearest sister, and use it, and, in times of sorrow and suffering
that come to all, you will know how to prize the legacy of your poor
brother. Many, many books do well enough for life; but there is only one
of any value when we come to die.

"You have been a voyager of late, Mr. Lindsay," he continued, "and I
have been a voyager too. I have been journeying in darkness and
discomfort, amid strange unearthly shapes of dread and horror, with no
reason to direct and no will to govern. Oh, the unspeakable unhappiness
of these wanderings!--these dreams of suspicion, and fear, and hatred,
in which shadow and substance, the true and the false, were so wrought
up and mingled together, that they formed but one fantastic and
miserable whole. And, oh! the unutterable horror of every momentary
return to a recollection of what I had been once, and a sense of what I
had become! Oh, when I awoke amid the terrors of the night--when I
turned me on the rustling straw, and heard the wild wail and yet wilder
laugh--when I heard and shuddered, and then felt the demon in all his
might coming over me, till I laughed and wailed with the others--oh the
misery! the utter misery!--But 'tis over, my friend--'tis all over; a
few, few tedious days, a few, few weary nights, and all my sufferings
shall be over."

I had covered my face with my hands, but the tears came bursting through
my fingers; the mother and si