indred to the dust. But a
despairing, heaven-abandoned, miserable wretch like me, struggled
through the horrors of that waking night-mare of agony, the typhus
fever, and once more recovered to the consciousness of unutterable woe.

Delirium, like wine, lays bare the heart, and shows all its weakness and
its guilt, revealing secrets which the possessor has for half a life
carefully hid. This, I doubt not, was my case, although no human lip
ever revealed to me the fact.

When I left my bed, I found my mother gliding about the house, the very
spectre of her former self. Her beautiful auburn hair, of which she was
so proud, and which, when a boy, I used to admire so much in its glossy
bands, was as white as snow. Her bright blue loving eye had lost all its
fire, and looked dim and hopeless, like the eyes of the dead. Alarmed at
her appearance, I demanded if she was ill.

She shook her head, and said, "that her anxiety during my illness had
sadly pulled her down. But I need not ask any questions. God had humbled
her greatly. Her sin had found her out." And then she hurried from me,
and I heard her weeping hysterically in her own room.

"Could I have betrayed myself during the ravings of fever?" I trembled
at the thought; but I dared not ask.

From that hour no confidence existed between me and my mother. During
the day I laboured in the field, and we saw little of each other. At
night, we sat for hours in silence--I with a book, and she with her
work--without uttering a word. Both seemed unwilling to part company and
go to bed, but we lacked the moral courage to disclose the sorrow that
was secretly consuming us.

Years passed on in this cheerless manner--this living death. My mother
at length roused herself from the stupor of despair. She read the Bible
earnestly, constantly; she wept and prayed, she went regularly to
chapel, and got what the Methodists call religion. Her repentance was
deep and sincere; she gradually grew more cheerful, and would talk to me
of the change she had experienced, urging me, in the most pathetic
manner, to confess my sins to God, and sue for pardon and peace through
the blood of the Saviour. My heart was closed to conviction. I could
neither read nor pray. The only thing from which I derived the least
comfort was in sending from time to time large sums of money anonymously
to Sir Walter Carlos, to relieve him from difficulties to which he was
often exposed by his reckless extravagance.