ling streets, and hastened to bury myself among the hills.
I pushed forward without rest or pause until I found myself on the crest
of a lofty eminence overlooking the town and harbour; when, flinging
myself down beneath the grateful shade of a gigantic cotton-wood, I gave
free vent to my feelings of suspense, indignation, and sorrow, and
burying my face in my hands wept as if my heart would break. I will not
attempt to describe or enlarge upon the feelings which then harrowed my
soul; the words have never yet been coined which could adequately
express my anguish. No merely mortal pen could depict it; nor can
anyone, save those unfortunates who have passed through such an ordeal,
imagine it. Moreover, the subject even now, when I am old and grey-
headed, is still so painful to me that I care not to dwell unduly upon
it. Let me, therefore, pass on to the moment when, relieved, yet
exhausted by the passage of that terrible outburst of tears, I had so
far regained composure as to be able to look my position fairly in the
face.

My first act was to draw forth the fatal bundle of letters and reperuse
them patiently from beginning to end, still clinging to the desperate
hope that I had after all, in some unaccountable way, misunderstood my
father's meaning, and that I was under some hallucination. But no;
there were the words all too plainly written for any possibility of
mistake. His was the hallucination--not mine. _False_? A
dissimulator? I thrust my hand into my bosom, and dragged forth the
velvet case containing my mother's portrait, which I had worn next my
heart throughout all the vicissitudes of fortune encountered by me since
the moment it had first been placed in my hands, and, pressing the
spring, threw back the cover, and allowed my eyes to rest upon the
loveliness it had concealed. Deceitful! If falsehood lurked within the
liquid depths of those clear, calm, steadfast eyes, or was hidden behind
that smooth and placid brow, then I thought must the very angels be
false! If falsehood could shroud itself behind a mask of such
surpassing loveliness, such an aspect and personification of all that is
pure, and innocent, and faithful, and true, "where," I asked myself,
"oh! where is truth to be found?" That my mother had, all unwittingly,
and in some inexplicable manner aroused my father's suspicions, I could
not doubt; but, after all, the matter was manifestly, to my mind, merely
one of fancied or implied d