as the express image of the love which exists in
the divine nature, tarnished and darkened by earthly--I may say by
hellish--passions. Even then, and from that very night, she altered much:
as one passed her, she muttered indistinctly; often she would lift up her
hands in the air, clench them, and shake them as if at some figure that
she saw in the clouds; and at times she slunk into corners, refused all
comfort or society, and sank wholly into herself."

"And how meantime did her son behave?"

"Oh, Sir, incomparably well. He knew his mother's temper: and the very
night before he suffered, as he hung about her neck and kissed her at
their farewell interview, he wrung her hand and prayed her to put aside
all thoughts of vengeance. I attended him to the last: and his final
words to me on the scaffold, as the executioner prepared to draw the
cap over his face, were--'God bless you. Sir, and remember!' by which
he meant to remind me of his only request; and _that_ was that I would
visit his mother, and endeavour to soothe her into resignation, and
persuade her to let him sleep unremembered in his grave; and not to
recal the memory of his unhappy end to people's minds by any action
that might make shipwreck of her own conscience. Young as he was, Mr.
Bertram, these were the thoughts that made the bitterness of death to
him; 'thoughts high for one so tender:'[2]--most of all the thought
afflicted him that _he_ should be made the occasion of overthrowing the
peace of mind of her whom he loved beyond all things in the world. Sir
Morgan mused much when he heard this report of the boy's latter hours;
and afterwards much more, when two of the older smugglers were taken
and condemned for the same murders: for their confessions wholly
exonerated him from all knowledge of their worst actions: he was
considered by the whole gang as a mere child; so indeed he was: and
nothing was ever communicated to him of their schemes: nor was he ever
present at any of them except by mere accident. The extent of his
connexion appeared to have been this--that now and then he had given
them a helping hand in stowing away their smuggled goods; and _that_
only for the sake of his mother, who was very poor, having just become
a widow,--and in this way obtained a few groceries or other additions
to her domestic comforts. This it was that made the sharpest sting in
the mother's wretchedness: she knew that all had been done for _her_;
that, but for her sa