In a few days he sat up. He was extremely emaciated
and weak. He was informed that his recovery had been
almost miraculous. On relating the circumstance of the
figure which had appeared the first evening of his illness,
and at the previous periods of the last several years, the
physician referred it at once, of course, to shattered nerves
and a disturbed imagination, and stated that it was not an
uncommon symptom.

When the doctor left him, a feeling of weakness and wo
came over the feeble invalid; he threw himself upon a sofa,
and could not restrain his tears. His heart swelled with
mingled emotions, which all merged in an insupportable
despair. Thoughts of his happy, innocent boyhood, of Fanny
Elton, the still deeply-beloved, first-chosen object of his
affection, and of Frank, his brother, now mouldering in his
early grave; the horrible image of the dying Middleton,

[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]

the conviction that he could never know peace of mind
again, and the idea that he had recovered from death only
to sink back, in the course of a few years, into a state of
annihilation—all these thoughts pressing upon him together
were too much for him. He regretted his recovery. Why
had they brought him back to life? Why had he not gone
to ashes and the worm? Why! since he must go to them at
last? He looked forward to the path before him: a world
of phantoms and blind chance, with no reward for virtue, no
protection from vice, no guarantee against death, no hope
for the future, no motive in self-cultivation but what arose
and ended with this transitory scene, no glory in pure things;
no distinction, but passing and conventional ones between
right and wrong, no meeting again with the dead, no future,
no God; all dark, all accidental, all reckless, all cold and
lonely, and all fleeting away into nothing. What was the
world, what was life on such terms? Oh, nothing, worse
than nothing.

His long illness had made him hysterical, and, as these
really sad and withering thoughts rolled through his mind,
like the dark, damp clouds of a stormy sky over the head
of the wave-tossed sailor, who, in his little boat, without
compass or rudder, finds himself abandoned to the pitiless
tempest, the saddest tears a mortal could shed flowed down
his cheeks, and he abandoned himself to utter despair.

“Yes!” he murmured, “my poor mother, and Mr. Elton,
and Seers, were right in one respect. I have tried the
world, and found it wanting. I have gone abroad in life
confident in infidelity, and all around me has become hollow
and miserable. I do want aid and protection from that
Great Being who created me. I am weak and guilty, blood-stained
and broken-hearted—oh God!”

And now, from his loneliness and his despair, his soul
turned to his Maker at last.

“If thou hearest thy creatures, have mercy upon me! If
there be light, let it shine on me! for, of a truth, by myself
I am a wretch.”

There was a knock at the door. He rose hastily, ashamed
of his tears. The intruder was his servant. He
brought a letter and went out again. Harry left it on the
table a long time untouched. He was afraid to open it; he
felt he had no strength in himself to bear any shock. That
proud self-confidence, that buoyant strength, that daring

[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]

readiness to meet events, alas! they had left him. They
had gone with his youth and thoughtlessness, his iron nerves,
his round cheek, his careless forehead, and unshaded heart.

At length he took the mute messenger. It was covered
with addresses and post-marks. It seemed redolent of the
air of home. The flowers of Rose Hill breathed from its
folds. The faces of the loved ones associated with that
spot crowded around him, and he kissed it as he recognised
the writing of his mother, and saw that it was not sealed
with black.

“No, no! They are yet all there. No new stroke has
bereft me; my father, my mother, Mary, and Fanny are
not yet gone down into the black, unfathomable, eternal
abyss. Oh why am I so long away from them? Why do
I spend my weary, lonely life, distant from this sweet circle?
True, Frank is no more there; true, I shall go back
a strange, altered, darkened, gloomy man, with bloody hands
and a broken heart. But I will go back; they will pity
and forgive me.”

He tore open the letter. It was from his mother. It was
dated nearly a year ago. It had been following him through
several places, had been in the house since his first illness,
and been withheld till now by order of the doctor. It contained
another addressed by the hand of his father. He
read his mother's first.