thought.  I sought the minister in his study, and hoped to bring myself to calm and reason by dwelling seriously on the business of the day—­with him, the father of the lady, and my master.  He was not there.  He had left the parsonage with Doctor Mayhew an hour before.  I walked into the open air restless and unhappy, relying on the freshness and repose of night to be subdued and comforted.  It was a night to soften anger—­to conquer envy—­to destroy revenge—­beautiful and bright.  The hills were bathed in liquid silvery light, and on their heights, and in the vale, on all around, lay passion slumbering.  What could I find on such a night, but favour and incitement, support and confirmation, flattery and delusion?  Every object ministered to the imagination, and love had given that wings.  I trembled as I pursued my road, and fuel found its unobstructed way rapidly to the flame within.  Self-absorbed, I wandered on.  I did not choose my path.  I believed I did not, and I stopped at length—­before the house that held her.  I gazed upon it with reverence and love.  One room was lighted up.  Shadows flitted across the curtained window, and my heart throbbed sensibly when, amongst them, I imagined I could trace her form.  I was borne down by a conviction of wrong and culpability, but I could not move, or for a moment draw away my look.  It was a strange assurance that I felt—­but I did feel it, strongly and emphatically—­that I should see her palpably before I left the place.  I waited for that sight in certain expectation, and it came.  A light was carried from the room.  Diminished illumination there, and sudden brightness against a previously darkened casement, made this evident.  The light ascended—­another casement higher than the last was, in its turn, illumined, and it betrayed her figure.  She approached the window, and, for an instant—­oh how brief!—­looked into the heavenly night.  My poor heart sickened with delight, and I strained my eyes long after all was blank and dark again.

Daylight, and the employments of day, if they did not remove, weakened the turbulence of the preceding night.  The more I found my passion acquiring mastery, with greater vigour I renewed my work, and with more determination I pursued the objects that were most likely to fight and overcome it.  I laboured with the youths for a longer period.  I undertook to prepare a composition for the following day which I knew must take much thought and many hours in working out.  I armed myself at all points—­but the evening came and found me once more conscious of a void that left me prostrate.  Mr Fairman was again absent from home.  I could not rest in it, and I too sallied forth, but this time, to the village.  I would not deliberately offer violence to my conscience, and I shrunk from a premeditated visit to the distant house.  My own acquaintances in the village were not many, or of long standing, but there were some half dozen, especial favourites of the incumbent’s