——­And you go.  It is a pleasant country you have to travel through; but you see very little of the country.  It is a dangerous voyage, perhaps, you have to make; but you think very little of the danger.  The creaking of the timbers, and the lashing of the waves, are quieting music compared with the storm of your raging fears.  All the while you associate Dalton with the terror that seems to hang over you; and yet, your trust in Madge is true as Heaven!

At length you approach that home:  there lies your cottage resting sweetly upon its hill-side; and the autumn winds are soft; and the maple-tops sway gracefully, all clothed in the scarlet of their frost-dress.  Once again as the sun sinks behind the mountain with a trail of glory, and the violet haze tints the gray clouds like so many robes of angels, you take heart and courage, and with firm reliance on the Providence that fashions all forms of beauty, whether in heaven or in heart, your fears spread out, and vanish with the waning twilight.

She is not at the cottage-door to meet you; she does not expect you; and yet your bosom heaves, and your breathing is quick.  Your friend meets you, and shakes your hand.—­“Clarence,” he says, with the tenderness of an old friend,—­“be a man!”

Alas, you are a man;—­with a man’s heart, and a man’s fear, and a man’s agony!  Little Frank comes bounding toward you joyously—­yet under traces of tears:—­“Oh, papa, mother is gone!”

——­“Gone!” And you turn to the face of your friend; it is well he is near by, or you would have fallen.

He can tell you very little; he has known the character of Dalton; he has seen with fear his assiduous attentions—­tenfold multiplied since your leave.  He has trembled for the issue:  this very morning he observed a travelling carriage at the door;—­they drove away together.  You have no strength to question him.  You see that he fears the worst:  he does not know Madge so well as you.

——­And can it be?  Are you indeed widowed with that most terrible of widowhoods?  Is your wife living, and yet—­lost!  Talk not to such a man of the woes of sickness, of poverty, of death; he will laugh at your mimicry of grief.

——­All is blackness; whichever way you turn, it is the same; there is no light; your eye is put out; your soul is desolate forever!  The heart by which you had grown up into the full stature of joy and blessing, is rooted out of you, and thrown like something loathsome, at which the carrion dogs of the world scent and snuffle!

They will point at you, as the man who has lost all that he prized; and she has stolen it, whom he prized more than what was stolen!  And he, the accursed miscreant——.  But no, it can never be!  Madge is as true as Heaven!

Yet she is not there:  whence comes the light that is to cheer you?

——­Your children?

Ay, your children,—­your little Nelly,—­your noble Frank,—­they are yours,—­doubly, trebly, tenfold yours, now that she, their mother, is a mother no more to them forever!