I contracted the same sadness, in a
form so aggravated and morbid that the despondency, in me, became
despair, and the anxiety horror. The cruel fancy took possession of my
mind, installed there by my treacherously imaginative temperament, that
some awful calamity was about to befall my dear father; that he,
patient, submissive Christian that he was, even meditated suicide; and
that shape of fear so shook my soul with terror in the daytime, so
filled my dreams with horror in the night, that, as if it were not
myself, I turn back to pity the poor child now, and wonder that he did
not go mad.

Does he know the truth now up in Heaven, the beloved old man? Surely;
for the beloved old woman, who alone knew it on earth, is she not there?
He knows now how his selfish, wilful, school-hating scamp, of whom only
he and Aunt Judy ever boded any good, stole away from his playmates and
his games, every afternoon when school was dismissed, and with that
baleful phantom before him, and that doleful cry in his ears, flew
through the bustle and clatter of the wharves to where his father's
warehouse was, two miles away; and, dodging like a thief among crates
and boxes, bales and casks, and choking down the appeal of his lonely,
shame-faced terror, watched that door with all the eager, tenacious,
panting fidelity of a dog, until the merchant came forth on his way
homeward for the night. And how the scamp followed, dodging, watching,
trembling, unconsciously moaning, unconsciously sobbing, seeing no form
but his, hearing no sound but his footfall, keeping cunningly between
that form and the dock, lest it should suddenly dart, through the drays
and the moored vessels and plunge into the river, as the scamp had seen
it do in his dreams. And how, at the end of that walk through the Valley
of the Shadow of Death, when we reached our own door, and the
simple-hearted, good old man passed in, as ignorant of my following as
he was innocent of the monstrous purpose I imputed to him, I lingered
some minutes at the gate to ease with a sluice of tears my pent-up fears
and pains; and then burst into the yard, whistling, whooping, prancing,
swinging my satchel, without feeling or manners,--a shameless, heartless
brat and nuisance. And how, when the day, with all its secret sighs and
sobs, was over, and he and I retired to the same bed, I prayed to our
Father in heaven (muffling my very thoughts in the bed-clothes lest he
should hear them) to keep my ea