ainted away.

I cannot dwell on the miserable days that followed when the very sun in
heaven seemed dark to poor Eric's wounded and crushed spirit. He hardly
knew how they went by. And when they buried Vernon in the little green
churchyard by Russell's side, and the patter of the earth upon the
coffin--that most terrible of all sounds--struck his ear, the iron
entered into his soul, and he had but one wish as he turned away from
the open grave, and that was, soon to lie beside his beloved little
brother, and to be at rest.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER TEN.

THE LAST TEMPTATION.

A quotation from Homer's Iliad, ix. 505.

Time, the great good angel, Time, the merciful healer, assuaged the
violence of Eric's grief, which seemed likely to settle down into a
sober sadness. At first his letters to his parents and to Fairholm were
almost unintelligible in their fierce abandonment of sorrow; but they
grew calmer in time,--and while none of his school-fellows ever ventured
in his presence to allude to Vernon, because of the emotion which the
slightest mention of him excited, yet he rarely wrote any letters to his
relations in which he did not refer to his brother's death, in language
which grew at length both manly and resigned.

A month after, in the summer term, he was sitting alone in his study in
the afternoon (for he could not summon up spirit enough to play
regularly at cricket), writing a long letter to his aunt. He spoke
freely and unreservedly of his past errors,--more freely than he had
ever done before,--and expressed not only deep penitence, but even
strong hatred of his previous unworthy courses. "I can hardly even yet
realise," he added, "that I am alone here, and that I am writing to my
aunt Trevor about the death of my little brother, my noble, only
brother, Vernon. Oh, how my whole soul yearns towards him. I _must_ be
a better boy, I _will_ be better than I have been, in the hopes of
meeting him again. Indeed, indeed, dear aunt, though I have been so
guilty, I am laying aside, with all my might, idleness and all bad
habits, and doing my very best to redeem the lost years. I do hope that
the rest of my time at Roslyn will be more worthily spent than any of it
has been as yet."

He finished the sentence, and laid his pen down to think, gazing quietly
on the blue hills and sunlit sea. A feeling of hope and repose stole
over him;--when suddenly he saw at the door, which was ajar, the leering
eyes and