l fir sapling for support. What a night it was! The spray of
the waves breaking against the cliff leaped up into my face mingled with
the blinding rain, and dimmed my vision so that I could only catch a
faint view of the boiling, seething gulf below. Beyond, all was chaos;
for a gray haze floated upon the water and met the low hanging clouds.
And clear above the deep thunder of the sea came the shrill yelling of
the wind in the pine groves which fringed the cliffs, sounding like the
demoniacal laughter of an army of devils. Shall I ever forget the horror
of that day, I wonder! I think not! It is written upon a page of my
memory in characters over which time can have no power.

And in that moment of agony, when my thoughts were full of his peril, I
wrestled no longer with my secret; I knew that I loved him. I knew that
he was dear to me as no other man could be. I knew that I was face to
face with a misery unchanging and unending.

Were not the fates themselves fighting against me in my task? That it
should be, of all men upon this earth, he, the son of the woman whose
death would be at my door. A murderess! Should I be that! The wind
caught up the word which had burst from my pale lips, and I seemed to
hear it echoed with fiendish mirth among the bending tree tops of the
plantation. A murderess! and of his mother, the mother whom he loved so
fondly! If he should know it! If the day should come when my sin should
be laid bare, and he should know that he had given his love to such a
one. Sin! Was it a sin? Was my love turning the whole world upside down?
Had it seemed so to me before? Was it sin or justice! Oh! to whom should
I look for strength to hold me to my purpose. To pray would be
blasphemous. For me there was no God, no friend on earth, no heaven! I
could only think of that one shattered life, and hug it to my memory.

I wandered backward and forward in the storm, drenched and cold, yet all
unmindful of my state. I could have borne no roof over my head in those
hours of my agony. The thought of his danger maddened me. Even though I
knew so well that he could be nothing to me; that if he knew the truth,
he would loathe me; that soon the day would come when I should scarcely
dare to raise my eyes to his before we parted forever. All these things
seemed to make me long the more passionately to look once more into his
face, to know that he was safe. It was my fault that he was in this
danger. Horrible thought!

I w