“No,” replied Bressant, after a mental conflict as violent as it was brief; “I’ll lead the horse myself.”  The only pleasure now left to this young man was to insult and torture himself to the utmost of his ingenuity.  He had forfeited all right to protect or care for Sophie, and it was with a savage satisfaction that he resigned it to Bill Reynolds, as being the worthier and better man.  It was the quixoticism of self-degradation, but was doubtless not without some wholesome influence.

In three minutes more they were at the Parsonage-gate.  They made a stretcher of the sleigh-robe, and carried Sophie in on it.  The gate, flapping-to behind them, sounded like a fretful and querulous complaint.  As they mounted the porch-steps, which creaked and crackled beneath their weight, the door was opened by Cornelia, in her travelling-dress.  Her face expressed so vividly the unspeakable horror which she felt as her eyes rested on her sister’s half-opened lids, that Bressant, seeing it, was stricken anew with the perception of his own misery.  As Cornelia looked up from the pure and innocent features—­which never had worn an awful and forbidding expression until now, when all power of expression was gone—­her glance and Bressant’s met; but, after a moment’s encounter, both dropped their eyes, with an involuntary shudder.  Their trial and sentence were condensed into so seemingly brief a space.

But Bill Reynolds neither dealt in nor appreciated such refinements upon the good old ways of communicating sentiments.

“Good-evening, Miss Valeyon,” exclaimed he.  “I guess we didn’t expect to see one another again to-night.  Pray don’t imagine, miss, that I bear you any grudge.  At times like this personal considerations don’t count—­not with me.  I’ll shake hands with you, Miss Valeyon, first chance I get, and we’ll be just as much friends as ever we was before.  That’s the right way, I guess.”

The door of the guest-chamber stood open, and the sleigh-robe, with its burden, was laid upon the bed whereon Bressant had spent so many weary days.  Then the voice of the professor, who had been awakened by the noise and the sound of feet, was heard from the top of the stairs, demanding to know what was the matter.

“Come down,” said Bressant, stepping to the guest-chamber door.  “Be quick!”

He spoke more slowly and deeply than was his wont.  In spite—­or perhaps in consequence—­of his abasement, forlornness, and unworthiness, he showed a dignity and impressiveness which were novel in him.  The boyishness, vivacity, and motion, had quite vanished.  There were a depth and hollowness in his eyes which gave a singular power to his face.  There must have been a vein of genuine strength and nobleness in the man, or he would have been too much crushed to show any thing but weak despair or brutal sullenness.  Had Professor Valeyon’s attention been directed to the point, he might have recognized his pupil as being now thoroughly grounded in the elements of emotional experience.