and several men were employed
in dragging the deep and rapid stream; I pointed that way, and
she seemed at once to understand me, for a deep groan was her
only answer. Once she said, "Pray for me, Ellen;" and then for
the first time remorse took its place by the side of terror in
my mind. I felt I could not pray--no exactly-defined idea of
guilt presented itself to my mind, and yet there was a murmur
in my ears, the burden of which was, "She has killed her--she
has killed her;" (and as when standing on a dizzy height, with
a firm hold on some railing or plank of support, something
whispers to one, "If I should let it go!") I felt afraid that
the next moment I should say out loud, "I have killed her."

The idea of prayer made me tremble. Once I said mechanically,
"O God! forgive me," and then shuddered. It sounded to myself
like a confession of murder. I dared not address God as I had
done the day before. One instant I thought of myself as of a
guilty wretch, unworthy to live, unworthy to lift up her voice
in prayer, or to raise her eyes to the calm and cloudless sky.
At other times I felt as if God had dealt too hardly with me:
I pitied myself, and my heart waxed rebellious in its grief. I
said to myself, like Cain, "My punishment is greater than I
can bear;" and then I almost cursed myself for having thought
of Cain--for I had not murdered my cousin, though somebody
said I had killed her. For one instant anger had maddened me;
without thought, without intention, I had struck her--one
hasty blow was given, and now my youth was blighted, my peace
of mind was gone; the source of all pure joys, of all holy
thoughts, was dried up within me. I should never stand again
in the sacred silence of the solemn night, and feel as if its
whispering winds were bringing tidings from a better world to
my soul. And in those days of glowing beauty, when streams of
light intoxicate the eye, when all nature breaks into song, or
blossoms into flower, never again should I feel myself as in
past years, a part of that bright creation, longing only, in
the fulness of my heart, to prostrate myself in fervent
adoration before Him who gave to the birds and to the streams
a voice to praise Him; to the glorious heavens a charge to
magnify Him; and to man, enthusiasm, emotion, poetry,
music--_all_ that lifts the soul above itself and the material
world around it, to the wide fields of enraptured
contemplation.

But now a chain would evermore we