is a very awful reflection.  But though my fate might operate as a warning to others, I am by no means anxious to be held up as a moral scarecrow.  Rather let me take warning myself, amend my life, abandon intemperance, which leads to all manner of wickedness, and suffer myself no more to be ensnared by the wiles and delusions of the tempter in the form of a fair woman.  No—­no—­I will alter and amend my life.”

I regret, however, to say that these praiseworthy resolutions were but transient, and that the squire, quite forgetting that the work of reform, if intended to be really accomplished, ought to commence at once, and by no means be postponed till the morrow, yielded to the seductions of a fresh pottle of sack, which was presented to him at the moment by Bess, and in taking it could not help squeezing the hand of the bouncing hostess, and gazing at her more tenderly than became a married man.  Oh!  Nicholas—­Nicholas—­the work of reform, I am afraid, proceeds very slowly and imperfectly with you.  Your friend, Parson.  Dewhurst, would have told you that it is much easier to form good resolutions than to keep them.

Leaving the squire, however, to his cogitations and his sack, the attorney to his memorandum-book, in which he was still engaged in writing, and the others to their talk, we shall proceed to the chamber whither the poor miller had been led by Bess.  When visited by the rector, he had been apparently soothed by the worthy man’s consolatory advice, but when left alone he speedily relapsed into his former dark and gloomy state of mind.  He did not notice Bess, who, according to Holden’s directions, placed the aquavitae bottle before him, but, as long as she stayed, remained with his face buried in his hands.  As soon as she was gone he arose, and began to pace the room to and fro.  The window was open, and he could hear the funeral bell tolling mournfully at intervals.  Each recurrence of the dismal sound added sharpness and intensity to his grief.  His sufferings became almost intolerable, and drove him to the very verge of despair and madness.  If a weapon had been at hand, he might have seized it, and put a sudden period to his existence.  His breast was a chaos of fierce and troubled thoughts, in which one black and terrible idea arose and overpowered all the rest.  It was the desire of vengeance, deep and complete, upon her whom he looked upon as the murderess of his child.  He cared not how it were accomplished so it were done; but such was the opinion he entertained of the old hag’s power, that he doubted his ability to the task.  Still, as the bell tolled on, the furies at his heart lashed and goaded him on, and yelled in his ear revenge—­revenge!  Now, indeed, he was crazed with grief and rage; he tore off handfuls of hair, plunged his nails deeply into his breast, and while committing these and other wild excesses, with frantic imprecations he called down Heaven’s judgments on his own head.  He was in that lost and helpless state when the enemy of mankind has power over man.  Nor was the opportunity neglected; for when the wretched Baldwyn, who, exhausted by the violence of his motions, had leaned for a moment against the wall, he perceived to his surprise that there was a man in the room—­a small personage attired in rusty black, whom he thought had been one of the party in the adjoining chamber.