n the dead body
of her father, evidently torn by the pangs of agony and remorse, her
hands clenching and opening by turns, her wild and unwinking eyes
riveted upon those moveless features, which his love for her had so
often lit up with happiness and pride. Her mother, who was alarmed,
shocked, stunned, gazed upon her, but could not speak. At length she
herself broke the silence.

"Mother," said she, "I came to see my father, for I know he won't strike
me now, and he never did. O, no, because I ran away from him and from
all of you, but not till after I had deserved it; before that I was
safe. Mother, didn't my father love me once better than his own life?
I think he did. O, yes, and I returned it by murdering him--by sending
him--that father there that loved me so well--by--by sending him to the
hangman--to a death of disgrace and shame. That's what his own Nannie,
as he used to call me, did for him. But no shame---no guilt to you,
father; the shame and the guilt are your own Nannie's, and that's the
only comfort I have; for you're happy, what I will never be, either in
this world or the next. You are now in heaven; but you will never see
your own Nannie there."

The recollections caused by her appearance, and the heart-rending
language she used, touched her mother's heart, now softened by her
sufferings into pity for her affliction, if not into a portion of the
former affection which she bore her.

"O Nannie, Nannie!" said she, now weeping bitterly upon a fresh sorrow,
"don't talk that way--don't, don't; you have repentance to turn to; and
for what you've done, God will yet forgive you, and so will your mother.
It was a great crime in you; but God can forgive the greatest, if his
own creatures will turn to him with sorrow for what they've done."

She never once turned her eyes upon her mother, nor raised them for a
moment from her father's face. In fact, she did not seem to have heard
a single syllable she said, and this was evident from the wild but
affecting abstractedness of her manner.

"Mother!" she exclaimed, "that man they say is a murderer, and yet I am
not worthy to touch him. Ah! I'm alone now--altogether alone, and he--he
that loved me, too, was taken away from me by a cruel death--ay, a cruel
death; for it was barbarous to kill him as if he was a wild beast--ay,
and without one moment's notice, with all his sins upon his head. He
is gone--he is gone; and there lies the man that murdered him--there
he