, and your
clothes streaming with blood. I was horror-stricken. I joined the crowd;
I learned that you had been stabbed, and it was feared mortally.

I did not return home: no, I went into the fields, and lay out all
night, and lifted up my heart to God, and wept aloud, and peace fell
upon me,--at least, what was peace compared to the tempestuous darkness
which had before reigned in my breast. The sight of you, bleeding
and insensible,--you, against whom I had harboured a fratricide's
purpose,--had stricken, as it were, the weapon from my hand and the
madness from my mind. I shuddered at what I had escaped; I blessed God
for my deliverance; and with the gratitude and the awe came repentance;
and repentance brought a resolution to fly, since I could not wrestle
with my mighty and dread temptation: the moment that resolution was
formed, it was as if an incubus were taken from my breast. Even the next
morning I did not return home: my anxiety for you was such that I forgot
all caution; I went to your house myself; I saw one of your servants to
whom I was personally unknown. I inquired respecting you, and learned
that your wound had not been mortal, and that the servant had overheard
one of the medical attendants say you were not even in danger.

At this news I felt the serpent stir again within me, but I resolved to
crush it at the first: I would not even expose myself to the temptation
of passing by Isora's house; I went straight in search of my horse; I
mounted, and fled resolutely from the scene of my soul's peril. "I will
go," I said, "to the home of our childhood; I will surround myself
by the mute tokens of the early love which my brother bore me; I
will think,--while penance and prayer cleanse my soul from its black
guilt,--I will think that I am also making a sacrifice to that brother."

I returned then to Devereux Court, and I resolved to forego all
hope--all persecution--of Isora! My brother--my brother, my heart yearns
to you at this moment, even though years and distance, and, above all,
my own crimes, place a gulf between us which I may never pass; it yearns
to you when I think of those quiet shades, and the scenes where, pure
and unsullied, we wandered together, when life was all verdure and
freshness, and we dreamed not of what was to come! If even now my heart
yearns to you, Morton, when I think of that home and those days, believe
that it had some softness and some mercy for you then. Yes, I repeat,
I re