“You have come, Kate—­come, according to your promise, yet you wear not loving looks.  Your eye is vacant—­your heart, it beats sadly and hurriedly beneath my hand, as if there were gloomy and vexatious thoughts within.”

“And should I not be sad, Mark, and should you not be sad?  Gloom and sorrow befit our situations alike; though for you I feel more than for myself.  I think not so much of our parting, as of your misfortune in having partaken of this crime.  There is to me but little occasion for grief in the temporary separation which I am sure will precede our final union.  But this dreadful deed, Mark—­it is this that makes me sad.  The knowledge that you, whom I thought too gentle wantonly to crush the crawling insect, should have become the slayer of men—­of innocent men, too—­makes my heart bleed within, and my eyes fill; and when I think of it, as indeed I now think of little else, and feel that its remorse and all its consequences must haunt you for many years, I almost think, with my father, that it would be better we should see each other no more.  I think I could see you depart, knowing that it was for ever, without a tear, were this sin not upon your head.”

“Your words are cruel, Kate; but you can not speak to my spirit in language more severe than it speaks momentarily to itself.  I never knew anything of punishment before; and the first lesson is a bitter one.  Your words touch me but little now, as the tree, when the axe has once girdled it, has no feeling for any further stroke.  Forbear then, dear Kate, as you love yourself.  Brood not upon a subject that brings pain with it to your own spirit, and has almost ceased, except in its consequences, to operate upon mine.  Let us now speak of those things which concern you nearly, and me not a little—­of the only thing, which, besides this deed of death, troubles my thought at this moment.  Let us speak of our future hope—­if hope there may be for me, after the stern sentence which your lips uttered in part even now.”

“It was for you—­for your safety, believe me, Mark, that I spoke; my own heart was wrung with the language of my lips—­the language of my cooler thought.  I spoke only for your safety and not for myself.  Could—­I again repeat—­could this deed be undone—­could you be free from the reproach and the punishment, I would be content, though the strings of my heart cracked with its own doom, to forego all claim upon you—­to give you up—­to give up my own hope of happiness for ever.”

Her words were passionate, and at their close her head sunk upon his shoulder, while her tears gushed forth without restraint, and in defiance of all her efforts.  The heart of the woodman was deeply and painfully affected, and the words refused to leave his lips, while a kindred anguish shook his manly frame, and rendered it almost a difficulty with him to sustain the slight fabric of hers.  With a stern effort, however, he recovered himself, and reseating her upon the bank from which, in the agitation of the moment, they had both arisen, he endeavored to soothe her spirit, by unfolding his plan of future life.