But, like all affliction, it purified and sanctified.  To Eric, as he rested his aching head on a pillow wet with tears, and vainly sought for the sleep whose blessing he had never learned to prize before, how odious seemed all the vice which he had seen and partaken in since he became an inmate of that little room.  How his soul revolted with infinite disgust from the language which he had heard, and the open glorying in sin of which he had so often been a witness.  The stain and the shame of sin fell heavier than ever on his heart; it rode on his breast like a nightmare; it haunted his fancy with visions of guilty memory, and shapes of horrible regret.  The ghosts of buried misdoings, which he had thought long lost in the mists of recollection, started up menacingly from their forgotten graves, and made him shrink with a sense of their awful reality.  Behind him, like a wilderness, lay years which the locust had eaten; the intrusted hours which had passed away, and been reckoned to him as they past.

And the thought of Russell mingled with all—­Russell, as he fondly imagined him now, glorified with the glory of heaven, crowned, and in white robes, and with a palm in his hand.  Yes, he had walked and talked with one of the Holy Ones.  Had Edwin’s death, quenched his human affections, and altered his human heart?  If not, might not he be there even now, leaning over his friend with the beauty of his invisible presence?  The thought startled him, and seemed to give an awful lustre to the moonbeam which fell into the room.  No; he could not endure such a presence now, with his weak conscience and corrupted heart; and Eric hid his head under the clothes, and shut his eyes.

Once more the pang of separation entered like iron into his soul.  Should he ever meet Russell again?  What if he had died instead of Edwin, where would he have been?  “Oh, no! no!” he murmured aloud, as the terrible thought came over him of his own utter unfitness for death, and the possibility that he might never, never again hear the beloved accents, or gaze on the cherished countenance of his school friend.

In this tumult of accusing thoughts he fell asleep; but that night the dew of blessing did not fall for him on the fields of sleep.  He was frightened by unbidden dreams, in all of which his conscience obtruded on him his sinfulness, and his affection called up the haunting lineaments of the dear dead face.  He was wandering down a path, at the end of which Russell stood with open arms inviting him earnestly to join him there; he saw his bright ingenuous smile, and heard, as of old, his joyous words, and he hastened to meet him; when suddenly the boy-figure disappeared, and in its place he saw the stern brow, and gleaming garments, and drawn flaming sword of the Avenger.  And then he was in a great wood alone, and wandering, when the well-known voice called his name, and entreated him to turn from that evil place; and he longed to turn,—­but, whenever