passed some weeks here twenty-five years since, and who was never afterwards heard of?"

Mr. Forrester paused, but Cumming could not speak; he leaned for support on the back of a chair, grasping it eagerly with his hands.

"Your master has had a very extraordinary dream, which we believe to be connected with that individual," said the Rector; and without appearing to notice the emotion of his auditor, he proceeded to relate the circumstance, while Walton gazed on the changing countenance of Cumming, with agonizing intentness. John listened to the recital with breathless interest. At first, the convulsive quivering of his lip was all that indicated his secret emotion; but when the scene of the murder was detailed, and the spot and the struggle were described, his whole frame shook with agony; a mortal paleness spread over his face, his hands relaxed their grasp, and he fell into a death-like swoon.

Mr. Forrester and Walton placed him on a couch, and after the application of various remedies, a deep-drawn sigh evinced the return of consciousness; he opened his eyes, looked fearfully around, and in vain tried to speak. A cordial was administered, and after swallowing a few drops, he exclaimed

"I am a doomed man! the hand of God is upon me."

"Stop, Cumming, and listen to me," said Walton, eagerly. "I would give all I have in the world, to believe you innocent; but make no rash confession, and fear nothing from me. I solemnly pledge myself never to appear against you in this matter!"

"The hand of God is upon me," repeated Cumming, with a shudder, "and who can hinder it? My crime must be known to the whole world. I give myself up to justice. You shall hear all."

It was a dark tale of jealousy and revenge.-He had followed the lovers secretly to their trystingplace, overheard the tender parting, the vow of constancy, the warm fond hope of a happy meeting. Maddened with fury, he breathed a vow that such a day of joy should never rise for them, and in a few hours sealed it by a deed of blood. He described the sort of malignant triumph, which mingled even in the keen agony of his remorse, when his victim lay motionless before him; the sudden, dreadful calm, which succeeded the tempest of his passion; the shuddering recoil with which he shrunk from the object of his love, and the dread of detection, which for years had haunted him, as a grim and fearful spectre.

To leave the neighbourhood had been his first impulse; but the fear of awakening suspicion determined him to remain, and endure conjectures, wonderings, and allusions, which made him sick at heart. He seemed barred and shut out from the sympathies and humanities of social life. But years rolled away, and pity and wonder died away also. That a sailor should perish off some distant coast, and be heard of no more, was no new event in the annals of human suffering; and except in the faithful heart of poor Susan, scarcely any remembrance of Frank Gordon was retained.

Gradually, the fears of Cumming had subsided, and a comparative calm had stolen over his feelings and conscience. True, it was a fearful crime, committed in an hour of intense passion; but he lived in the esteem and confidence of his fellow men, and no vial of wrath had been poured on his devoted head by the avenging hand of Providence. Every day, the remembrance of his crime became less acute and oppressive; and at length he began to look with something like complacency, on the honest industry, regularity, and usefulness of his life.

Mr. Forrester listened to the tale of his feelings with strong emotion. Never had he been more

keenly sensible of his deep responsibility, as an "ambassador from God to guilty man." The comparative peace of Cumming's mind was exchanged for the agony, not only of remorse, but of terror; he believed that his earthly doom was fixed, as irrevocably as that of the guilty King, who saw his fearful condemnation inscribed by no mortal hand on the walls of his palace; and he fancied that a decree of eternal vengeance had gone forth against him. With desperate eagerness he surrendered himself to justice, repeating his confession to a neighbouring magistrate; and in a few days he had exchanged the cheerful home of his master for the dreary cell of a felon's prison.

Some weeks intervened before the trial came on. In spite of Walton's reiterated entreaties, Cumming resolved to plead guilty. His mind continued in a state of deep despondency: he believed, that like Cain, the first murderer, he was an object of abhorrence to God and man, branded by the hand of the Eternal; and that the shame and ignominy awaiting him on earth, were but preludes to the everlasting shame and contempt which would be poured on his devoted head hereafter.

Day after day, did Mr. Forrester devote hours to the unhappy man, listening with deep sympathy

and patient tenderness, to the out-pourings of his harassed spirit. It was the Pastor's earnest desire to change the feelings and language of despair, to those of humble penitence: to prove, that in the midst of judgment, God remembers mercy; that even in this moment of utter desolation, amidst the chill and dreary darkness of that dungeon, a beam of heaven's own light could penetrate. Again, and again, he represented to the stricken man, that the judgments of God in this world, however severe, and though they may appear in a measure retributive, are still tempered with loving kindness and tender mercy; that correction, not vengeance, is their object; that they are intended, while they declare in the most emphatic language the watchful providence of God and his hatred of sin, to excite in the heart of the sinner, that repentance which shall not be repented of,—that they are, in fact, the work of love, that wondrous love, which willeth not that any should perish—which attaches unspeakable value to one immortal soul!

It was long, ere hope shed a beam over the tossed and troubled spirit of the criminal. Mr. Forrester, indeed, had no desire to check the salutary workings of penitence, to lull the soul with anodynes, which at once deaden the sense of sin, and bewilder