And, as she spoke, she clung to him as one pleading herself for life to the unrelenting executioner.  He replied, in a sarcasm, true to his general course of life.

“Yes, Ellen! your revenge for your wrongs would not be well complete, unless your own eyes witnessed it; and you insist upon the privilege as if you duly estimated the luxury.  Well!—­you may stay.  It needed but this, if anything had been needed, to show me my own impotence.”

“Cruel to the last, Guy—­cruel to the last!  Surely the few hours between this and that of death, are too precious to be employed in bitterness.  Were not prayer better—­if you will not pray, Guy, let me.  My prayer shall be for you; and, in the forgiveness which my heart shall truly send to my lips for the wrongs you have done to me and mine, I shall not altogether despair, so that you join with me, of winning a forgiveness far more important and precious!  Guy, will you join me in prayer?”

“My knees are stiff, Ellen.  I have not been taught to kneel.”

“But it is not too late to learn.  Bend, bow with me, Guy—­if you have ever loved the poor Ellen, bow with her now.  It is her prayer; and, oh, think, how weak is the vanity of this pride in a situation like yours.  How idle the stern and stubborn spirit, when men can place you in bonds—­when men can take away life and name—­when men can hoot and hiss and defile your fettered and enfeebled person!  It was for a season and a trial like this, Guy, that humility was given us.  It was in order to such an example that the Savior died for us.”

“He died not for me.  I have gained nothing by his death.  Men are as bad as ever, and wrong—­the wrong which deprived me of my right in society—­has been as active and prevailing a principle of human action as before he died.  It is in his name now that they do the wrong, and in his name, since his death, they have contrived to find a sanction for all manner of crime.  Speak no more of this, Ellen; you know nothing about it.  It is all folly.”

“To you, Guy, it may be.  To the wise all things are foolish.  But to the humble heart there is a truth, even in what are thought follies, which brings us the best of teachings.  That is no folly which keeps down, in the even posture of humility, the spirit which circumstances would only bind and crush in every effort to rise.  That is no folly which prepares us for reverses, and fortifies us against change and vicissitude.  That is no folly which takes away the sting from affliction—­which has kept me, Guy, as once before you said, from driving a knife into your heart, while it lay beating against the one to which yours had brought all manner of affliction.  Oh, believe me, the faith and the feeling and the hope, not less than the fear, which has made me what I am now—­which has taught me to rely only on the one—­which has made me independent of all things and all loves—­ay, even of yours, when I refer to it—­is no idle folly.  It is the only medicine by which the soul may live.  It is that which I bring to you now.  Hear me, then—­Guy, hear the prayer of the poor Ellen, who surely has some right to be heard by you.  Kneel for me, and with me, on this dungeon floor, and pray—­only pray.”