The experience of the latter suggested much and minute advice,
respecting the youth's journey through the trackless forest. Upon
this subject he spoke with calm earnestness, as if he were sending
Reuben to the battle or the chase, while he himself remained
secure at home; and not as if the human countenance that was
about to leave him, were the last he would ever behold. But his
firmness was shaken before he concluded.

“Carry my blessing to Dorcas, and say that my last prayer
shall be for her and you. Bid her to have no hard thoughts because
you left me here”—Reuben's heart smote him—“for that
your life would not have weighed with you, if its sacrifice could
have done me good. She will marry you, after she has mourned
a little while for her father; and Heaven grant you long and
happy days! and may your children's children stand round your
death-bed! And, Reuben,” added he, as the weakness of mortality
made its way at last, “return, when your wounds are
healed and your weariness refreshed, return to this wild rock,
and lay my bones in the grave, and say a prayer over them.”

An almost superstitious regard, arising perhaps from the customs
of the Indians, whose war was with the dead, as well as the
living, was paid by the frontier inhabitants to the rites of sepulture;
and there are many instances of the sacrifice of life, in the
attempt to bury those who had fallen by the “sword of the wilderness.”
Reuben, therefore, felt the full importance of the promise,
which he most solemnly made, to return, and perform Roger
Malvin's obsequies. It was remarkable, that the latter, speaking
his whole heart in his parting words, no longer endeavored to persuade
the youth, that even the speediest succor might avail to the
preservation of his life. Reuben was internally convinced that he
should see Malvin's living face no more. His generous nature
would fain have delayed him, at whatever risk, till the dying scene
were past; but the desire of existence and the hope of happiness
had strengthened in his heart, and he was unable to resist them.

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

“It is enough,” said Roger Malvin, having listened to Reuben's
promise. “Go, and God speed you!”

The youth pressed his hand in silence, turned, and was departing.
His slow and faltering steps, however, had borne him but a
little way, before Malvin's voice recalled him.

“Reuben, Reuben,” said he, faintly; and Reuben returned and
knelt down by the dying man.

“Raise me, and let me lean against the rock,” was his last request.
“My face will be turned towards home, and I shall see
you a moment longer, as you pass among the trees.”

Reuben, having made the desired alteration in his companion's
posture, again began his solitary pilgrimage. He walked more
hastily at first than was consistent with his strength; for a sort
of guilty feeling, which sometimes torments men in their most
justifiable acts, caused him to seek concealment from Malvin's
eyes. But, after he had trodden far upon the rustling forest-leaves,
he crept back, impelled by a wild and painful curiosity,
and, sheltered by the earthy roots of an uptorn tree, gazed
earnestly at the desolate man. The morning sun was unclouded,
and the trees and shrubs imbibed the sweet air of the month of
May; yet there seemed a gloom on Nature's face, as if she sympathized
with mortal pain and sorrow. Roger Malvin's hands
were uplifted in a fervent prayer, some of the words of which
stole through the stillness of the woods, and entered Reuben's
heart, torturing it with an unutterable pang. They were the
broken accents of a petition for his own happiness and that of
Dorcas; and, as the youth listened, conscience, something in its
similitude, pleaded strongly with him to return, and lie down
again by the rock. He felt how hard was the doom of the kind
and generous being whom he had deserted in his extremity.
Death would come, like the slow approach of a corpse, stealing
gradually towards him through the forest, and showing its ghastly
and motionless features from behind a nearer, and yet a nearer

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

tree. But such must have been Reuben's own fate, had he tarried
another sunset; and who shall impute blame to him, if he shrink
from so useless a sacrifice? As he gave a parting look, a breeze
waved the little banner upon the sapling-oak, and reminded
Reuben of his vow.

* * * * * * *

Many circumstances contributed to retard the wounded traveller
in his way to the frontiers. On the second day, the clouds,
gathering densely over the sky, precluded the possibility of regulating
his course by the position of the sun; and he knew not but
that every effort of his almost exhausted strength was removing
him farther from the home he sought. His scanty sustenance
was supplied by the berries, and other spontaneous products of
the forest. Herds of deer, it is true, sometimes bounded past
him, and partridges frequently whirred up before his foot-steps;
but his ammunition had been expended in the fight, and he had no
means of slaying them. His wounds, irritated by the constant
exertion in which lay the only hope of life, wore away his
strength, and at intervals confused his reason. But, even in the
wanderings of intellect, Reuben's young heart clung strongly to
existence, and it was only through absolute incapacity of motion,
that he last sank down beneath a tree, compelled there to await
death.

In this situation he was discovered by a party, who, upon the
first intelligence of the fight, had been despatched to the relief of
the survivors. They conveyed him to the nearest settlement,
which chanced to be that of his own residence.

Dorcas, in the simplicity of the olden time, watched by the
bed-side of her wounded lover, and administered all those comforts
that are in the sole gift of woman's heart and hand. During
several days, Reuben's recollection strayed drowsily among the
perils and hardships through which he had passed, and he was
incapable of returning definite answers to the inquiries, with

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

which many were eager to harass him. No authentic particulars
of the battle had yet been circulated; nor could mothers,
wives, and children tell, whether their loved ones were detained
by captivity, or by the stronger chain of death. Dorcas nourished
her apprehensions in silence, till one afternoon, when Reuben
awoke from an unquiet sleep, and seemed to recognize her more
perfectly than at any previous time. She saw that his intellect
had become composed, and she could no longer restrain her filial
anxiety.

“My father, Reuben?” she began; but the change in her lover's
countenance made her pause.

The youth shrank, as if with a bitter pain, and the blood gushed
vividly into his wan and hollow cheeks. His first impulse was to
cover his face; but, apparently with a desperate effort, he half
raised himself, and spoke vehemently, defending himself against
an imaginary accusation.

“Your father was sore wounded in the battle, Dorcas, and he
bade me not burthen myself with him, but only to lead him to the
lake-side, that he might quench his thirst and die. But I would
not desert the old man in his extremity, and, though bleeding myself,
I supported him; I gave him half my strength, and led him
away with me. For three days we journeyed on together, and
your father was sustained beyond my hopes; but, awaking at
sunrise on the fourth day, I found him faint and exhausted,—he
was unable to proceed,—his life had ebbed away fast,—and”—

“He died!” exclaimed Dorcas, faintly.

Reuben felt it impossible to acknowledge that his selfish love
of life had hurried him away, before her father's fate was decided.
He spoke not; he only bowed his head; and, between shame and
exhaustion, sank back and hid his face in the pillow. Dorcas
wept, when her fears were thus confirmed; but the shock, as it
had been long anticipated, was on that account the less violent.

“You dug a grave for my poor father in the wilderness,

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

tendrils over the hidden entrance, he stood beneath his own window,
in the open area of Doctor Rappaccini's garden.

How often is it the case, that, when impossibilities have come
to pass, and dreams have condensed their misty substance into
tangible realities, we find ourselves calm, and even coldly self-possessed,
amid circumstances which it would have been a delirium
of joy or agony to anticipate! Fate delights to thwart us
thus. Passion will choose his own time to rush upon the scene,
and lingers sluggishly behind, when an appropriate adjustment
of events would seem to summon his appearance. So was it now
with Giovanni. Day after day, his pulses had throbbed with
feverish blood, at the improbable idea of an interview with Beatrice,
and of standing with her, face to face, in this very garden,
basking in the oriental sunshine of her beauty, and snatching
from her full gaze the mystery which he deemed the riddle of his
own existence. But now there was a singular and untimely
equanimity within his breast. He threw a glance around the
garden to discover if Beatrice or her father were present, and
perceiving that he was alone, began a critical observation of
the plants.

The aspect of one and all of them dissatisfied him; their
gorgeousness seemed fierce, passionate, and even unnatural.
There was hardly an individual shrub which a wanderer, straying
by himself through a forest, would not have been startled to
find growing wild, as if an unearthly face had glared at him out
of the thicket. Several, also, would have shocked a delicate
instinct by an appearance of artificialness, indicating that there
had been such commixture, and, as it were, adultery of various
vegetable species, that the production was no longer of God's
making, but the monstrous offspring of man's depraved fancy,
glowing with only an evil mockery of beauty. They were probably
the result of experiment, which, in one or two cases, had
succeeded in mingling plants individually lovely into a compound

[figure description] Blank Leaf.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]

her husband master of a farm, under older cultivation, larger,
and better stocked than most of the frontier establishments. Reuben
Bourne, however, was a neglectful husbandman; and while
the lands of the other settlers beeame annually more fruitful, his
deteriorated in the same proportion. The discouragements to
agriculture were greatly lessened by the cessation of Indian war,
during which men held the plough in one hand, and the musket in
the other; and were fortunate if the products of their dangerous
labor were not destroyed, either in the field or in the barn, by the
savage enemy. But Reuben did not profit by the altered condition
of the country; nor can it be denied, that his intervals of industrious
attention to his affairs were but scantily rewarded with success.
The irritability, by which he had recently become distinguished,
was another cause of his declining prosperity, as it occasioned
frequent quarrels, in his unavoidable intercourse with the neighboring
settlers. The results of these were innumerable lawsuits;
for the people of New England, in the earliest stages and
wildest circumstances of the country, adopted, whenever attainable,
the legal mode of deciding their differences. To be brief,
the world did not go well with Reuben Bourne, and, though not
till many years after his marriage, he was finally a ruined man,
with but one remaining expedient against the evil fate that had
pursued him. He was to throw sunlight into some deep recess
of the forest, and seek subsistence from the virgin bosom of the
wilderness.

The only child of Reuben and Dorcas was a son, now arrived
at the age of fifteen years, beautiful in youth, and giving promise
of a glorious manhood. He was peculiarly qualified for, and
already began to excel in, the wild accomplishments of frontier
life. His foot was fleet, his aim true, his apprehension quick, his
heart glad and high; and all, who anticipated the return of Indian
war, spoke of Cyrus Bourne as a future leader in the land. The
boy was loved by his father with a deep and silent strength, as if

[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

whatever was good and happy in his own nature had been transferred
to his child, carrying his affections with it. Even Dorcas,
though loving and beloved, was far less dear to him; for Reuben's
secret thoughts and insulated emotions had gradually made him a
selfish man; and he could no longer love deeply, except where
he saw, or imagined, some reflection or likeness of his own
mind. In Cyrus he recognized what he had himself been in
other days; and at intervals he seemed to partake of the boy's
spirit, and to be revived with a fresh and happy life. Reuben
was accompanied by his son in the expedition, for the purpose of
selecting a tract of land, and felling and burning the timber,
which necessarily preceded the removal of the household gods.
Two months of autumn were thus occupied; after which Reuben
Bourne and his young hunter returned, to spend their last winter
in the settlements.

* * * * * * *

It was early in the month of May, that the little family snapped
asunder whatever tendrils of affections had clung to inanimate
objects, and bade farewell to the few, who, in the blight of fortune,
called themselves their friends. The sadness of the parting
moment had, to each of the pilgrims, its peculiar alleviations.
Reuben, a moody man, and misanthropic because unhappy, strode
onward, with his usual stern brow and downcast eye, feeling few
regrets, and disdaining to acknowledge any. Dorcas, while she
wept abundantly over the broken ties by which her simple and
affectionate nature had bound itself to everything, felt that the
inhabitants of her inmost heart moved on with her, and that all
else would be supplied wherever she might go. And the boy
dashed one tear-drop from his eye, and thought of the adventurous
pleasures of the untrodden forest. Oh! who, in the enthusiasm
of a day-dream, has not wished that he were a wanderer in a
world of summer wilderness, with one fair and gentle being hanging
lightly on his arm? In youth, his free and exulting step

[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

would know no barrier but the rolling ocean or the snow-topt
mountains; calmer manhood would choose a home, where Nature
had strewn a double wealth, in the vale of some transparent
stream; and when hoary age, after long, long years of that pure
life, stole on and found him there, it would find him the father of
a race, the patriarch of a people, the founder of a mighty nation
yet to be. When death, like the sweet sleep which we welcome
after a day of happiness, came over him, his far descendants
would mourn over the venerated dust. Enveloped by tradition in
mysterious attributes, the men of future generations would call
him godlike; and remote posterity would see him standing, dimly
glorious, far up the valley of a hundred centuries!

The tangled and gloomy forest, through which the personages
of my tale were wandering, differed widely from the dreamer's
Land of Fantasie; yet there was something in their way of life
that Nature asserted as her own; and the gnawing cares, which
went with them from the world, were all that now obstructed their
happiness. One stout and shaggy steed, the bearer of all their
wealth, did not shrink from the added weight of Dorcas; although
her hardy breeding sustained her, during the larger part of each
day's journey, by her husband's side. Reuben and his son, their
muskets on their shoulders, and their axes slung behind them,
kept an unwearied pace, each watching with a hunter's eye for
the game that supplied their food. When hunger bade, they
halted and prepared their meal on the bank of some unpolluted
forest-brook, which, as they knelt down with thirsty lips to drink,
murmured a sweet unwillingness, like a maiden at love's first
kiss. They slept beneath a hut of branches, and awoke at peep
of light, refreshed for the toils of another day. Dorcas and the
boy went on joyously, and even Reuben's spirit shone at intervals
with an outward gladness; but inwardly there was a cold,
cold sorrow, which he compared to the snow-drifts, lying deep in

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

the glens and hollows of the rivulets, while the leaves were
brightly green above.

Cyrus Bourne was sufficiently skilled in the travel of the woods,
to observe that his father did not adhere to the course they had
pursued in their expedition of the preceding autumn. They were
now keeping farther to the north, striking out more directly from
the settlements, and into a region, of which savage beasts and
savage men were as yet the sole possessors. The boy sometimes
hinted his opinious upon the subject, and Reuben listened attentively,
and once or twice altered the direction of their march in
accordance with his son's counsel. But having so done, he
seemed ill at ease. His quick and wandering glances were sent
forward, apparently in search of enemies lurking behind the tree-trunks;
and seeing nothing there, he would cast his eyes backwards,
as if in fear of some pursuer. Cyrus, perceiving that his
father gradually resumed the old direction, forbore to interfere;
nor, though something began to weigh upon his heart, did his
adventurous nature permit him to regret the increased length and
the mystery of their way.

On the afternoon of the fifth day, they halted and made their
simple encampment nearly an hour before sunset. The face of
the country, for the last few miles, had been diversified by swells
of land, resembling huge waves of a petrified sea; and in one of
the corresponding hollows, a wild and romantic spot, had the
family reared their hut, and kindled their fire. There is something
chilling, and yet heart-warming, in the thought of three,
united by strong bands of love, and insulated from all that breathe
beside. The dark and gloomy pines looked down upon them, and,
as the wind swept through their tops, a pitying sound was heard
in the forest; or did those old trees groan, in fear that men were
come to lay the axe to their roots at last? Reuben and his son,
while Dorcas made ready their meal, proposed to wander out in
search of game, of which that day's march had afforded no

[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]

supply. The boy, promising not to quit the vicinity of the encampment,
bounded off with a step as light and elastic as that of the
deer he hoped to slay; while his father, feeling a transient happiness
as he gazed after him, was about to pursue an opposite
direction. Dorcas, in the meanwhile, had seated herself near
their fire of fallen branches, upon the moss-grown and mouldering
trunk of a tree, uprooted years before. Her employment,
diversified by an occasional glance at the pot, now beginning to
simmer over the blaze, was the perusal of the current year's
Massachusetts' Almanac, which, with the exception of an old
black-letter Bible, comprised all the literary wealth of the family.
None pay a greater regard to arbitrary divisions of time, than those
who are excluded from society; and Dorcas mentioned, as if the
information were of importance, that it was now the twelfth of
May. Her husband started.

“The twelfth of May! I should remember it well,” muttered
he, while many thoughts occasioned a momentary confusion in his
mind. “Where am I? Whither am I wandering? Where did
I leave him?”

Dorcas, too well accustomed to her husband's wayward moods
to note any peculiarity of demeanor, now laid aside the Almanac,
and addressed him in that mournful tone, which the tender-hearted
appropriate to griefs long cold and dead.

“It was near this time of the month, eighteen years ago, that
my poor father left this world for a better. He had a kind arm
to hold his head, and a kind voice to cheer him, Reuben, in his
last moments; and the thought of the faithful care you took of
him, has comforted me many a time since. Oh! death would
have been awful to a solitary man, in a wild place like this!”

“Pray Heaven, Dorcas,” said Reuben, in a broken voice,
“pray Heaven, that neither of us three dies solitary, and lies unburied,
in this howling wilderness!” And he hastened away,
leaving her to watch the fire, beneath the gloomy pines.

[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]

Reuben Bourne's rapid pace gradually slackened, as the pang,
unintentionally inflicted by the words of Dorcas, became less
acute. Many strange reflections, however, thronged upon him;
and, straying onward, rather like a sleep-walker than a hunter, it
was attributable to no care of his own, that his devious course
kept him in the vicinity of the encampment. His steps were imperceptibly
led almost in a circle, nor did he observe that he was
on the verge of a tract of land heavily timbered, but not with pine
trees. The place of the latter was here supplied by oaks, and
other of the harder woods; and around their roots clustered a
dense and bushy undergrowth, leaving, however, barren spaces
between the trees, thick-strewn with withered leaves. Whenever
the rustling of the branches, or the creaking of the trunks, made
a sound, as if the forest were waking from slumber, Reuben
instinctively raised the musket that rested on his arm, and cast a
quick, sharp glance on every side; but, convinced by a partial
observation that no animal was near, he would again give himself
up to his thoughts. He was musing on the strange influence that
had led him away from his premeditated course, and so far into
the depths of the wilderness. Unable to penetrate to the secret
place of his soul, where his motives lay hidden, he believed that a
supernatural voice had called him onward, and that a supernatural
power had obstructed his retreat. He trusted that it was Heaven's
intent to afford him an opportunity of expiating his sin; he hoped
that he might find the bones, so long unburied; and that, having
laid the earth over them, peace would throw its sunlight into the
sepulchre of his heart. From these thoughts he was aroused by
a rustling in the forest, at some distance from the spot to which
he had wandered. Perceiving the motion of some object behind
a thick veil of undergrowth, he fired, with the instinct of a hunter,
and the aim of a practised marksman. A low moan, which
told his success, and by which even animals can express their

[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]

dying agony, was unheeded by Reuben Bourne. What were the
recollections now breaking upon him?

The thicket into which Reuben had fired, was near the summit
of a swell of land, and was clustered around the base of a rock,
which, in the shape and smoothness of one of its surfaces, was not
unlike a gigantic grave-stone. As if reflected in a mirror, its
likeness was in Reuben's memory. He even recognized the veins
which seemed to form an inscription in forgotten characters;
everything remained the same, except that a thick covert of bushes
shrouded the lower part of the rock, and would have hidden Roger
Malvin, had he still been sitting there. Yet, in the next moment,
Reuben's eye was caught by another change, that time had
effected since he last stood, where he was now standing again,
behind the earthy roots of the uptorn tree. The sapling, to which
he had bound the blood-stained symbol of his vow, had increased
and strengthened into an oak, far indeed from its maturity, but
with no mean spread of shadowy branches. There was one singularity
observable in this tree, which made Reuben tremble.
The middle and lower branches were in luxuriant life, and an
excess of vegetation had fringed the trunk, almost to the ground;
but a blight had apparently stricken the upper part of the oak, and
the very topmost bough was withered, sapless, and utterly dead.
Reuben remembered how the little banner had fluttered on that
topmost bough, when it was green and lovely, eighteen years before.
Whose guilt had blasted it?

* * * * *

Dorcas, after the departure of the two hunters, continued her
preparations for their evening repast. Her sylvan table was the
moss-covered trunk of a large fallen tree, on the broadest part of
which she had spread a snow-white cloth, and arranged what
were left of the bright pewter vessels that had been her pride in
the settlements. It had a strange aspect—that one little spot of
homely comfort, in the desolate heart of Nature. The sunshine

[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]

yet lingered upon the higher branches of the trees that grew on
rising ground; but the shadows of evening had deepened into the
hollow, where the encampment was made; and the fire-light
began to redden as it gleamed up the tall trunks of the pines, or
hovered on the dense and obscure mass of foliage that circled
round the spot. The heart of Dorcas was not sad; for she felt
it was better to journey in the wilderness, with two whom she
loved, than to be a lonely woman in a crowd that cared not for
her. As she busied herself in arranging seats of mouldering
wood, covered with leaves, for Reuben and her son, her voice
danced through the gloomy forest, in the measure of a song that
she had learned in youth. The rude melody, the production of
a bard who won no name, was descriptive of a winter evening in
a frontier cottage, when, secured from savage inroad by the highpiled
snow-drifts, the family rejoiced by their own fire-side. The
whole song possessed that nameless charm, peculiar to unborrowed
thought; but four continually-recurring lines shone out from the
rest, like the blaze of the hearth whose joys they celebrated. Into
them, working magic with a few simple words, the poet had
instilled the very essence of domestic love and household happiness,
and they were poetry and picture joined in one. As Dorcas
sang, the walls of her forsaken home seemed to encircle her;
she no longer saw the gloomy pines; nor heard the wind, which
still, as she began each verse, sent a heavy breath through the
branches, and died away in a hollow moan, from the burthen of
the song. She was aroused by the report of a gun, in the vicinity
of the encampment; and either the sudden sound, or her loneliness
by the glowing fire, caused her to tremble violently. The
next moment, she laughed in the pride of a mother's heart.

“My beautiful young hunter! my boy has slain a deer!” she
exclaimed, recollecting that, in the direction whence the shot proceeded,
Cyrus had gone to the chase.

She waited a reasonable time, to hear her son's light step

[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]

bounding over the rustling leaves, to tell of his success. But he did
not immediately appear, and she sent her cheerful voice among
the trees in search of him.

“Cyrus! Cyrus!”

His coming was still delayed, and she determined, as the report
of the gun had apparently been very near, to seek for him in
person. Her assistance, also, might be necessary in bringing
home the venison, which she flattered herself he had obtained.
She therefore set forward, directing her steps by the long-past
sound, and singing as she went, in order that the boy might be
aware of her approach, and run to meet her. From behind the
trunk of every tree, and from every hiding place in the thick
foliage of the undergrowth, she hoped to discover the countenance
of her son, laughing with the sportive mischief that is born of
affection. The sun was now beneath the horizon, and the light
that came down among the trees was sufficiently dim to create
many illusions in her expecting fancy. Several times she seemed
indistinctly to see his face gazing out from among the leaves;
and once she imagined that he stood beckoning to her, at the base
of a craggy rock. Keeping her eyes on this object, however, it
proved to be no more than the trunk of an oak, fringed to the
very ground with little branches, one of which, thrust out farther
than the rest, was shaken by the breeze. Making her way round
the foot of the rock, she suddenly found herself close to her husband,
who had approached in another direction. Leaning upon
the butt of his gun, the muzzle of which rested upon the withered
leaves, he was apparently absorbed in the contemplation of some
object at his feet.

“How is this, Reuben? Have you slain the deer, and fallen
asleep over him?” exclaimed Dorcas, laughing cheerfully, on her
first slight observation of his posture and appearance.

He stirred not, neither did he turn his eyes towards her; and
a cold, shuddering fear, indefinite in its source and object, began

[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]

to creep into her blood. She now perceived that her husband's
face was ghastly pale, and his features were rigid, as if incapable
of assuming any other expression than the strong despair which
had hardened upon them. He gave not the slightest evidence
that he was aware of her approach.

“For the love of Heaven, Reuben, speak to me!” cried Dorcas,
and the strange sound of her own voice affrighted her even more
than the dead silence.

Her husband started, stared into her face; drew her to the front
of the rock, and pointed with his finger.

Oh! there lay the boy, asleep, but dreamless, upon the fallen
forest-leaves! his cheek rested upon his arm, his curled locks were
thrown back from his brow, his limbs were slightly relaxed. Had
a sudden weariness overcome the youthful hunter? Would his
mother's voice arouse him? She knew that it was death.

“This broad rock is the grave-stone of your near kindred,
Dorcas,” said her husband. “Your tears will fall at once over
your father and your son.”

She heard him not. With one wild shriek that seemed to force
its way from the sufferer's inmost soul, she sank insensible by the
side of her dead boy. At that moment the withered topmost
bow of the oak loosened itself in the stilly air, and fell in soft,
light fragments upon the rock, upon the leaves, upon Reuben,
upon his wife and child, and upon Roger Malvin's bones. Then
Reuben's heart was stricken, and the tears gushed out like water
from a rock. The vow that the wounded youth had made, the
blighted man had come to redeem. His sin was expiated, the
curse was gone from him; and in the hour when he had shed blood
dearer to him than his own, a prayer, the first for years, went up
to Heaven from the lips of Reuben Bourne.

p134-336

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