The heart of the traveller, then, was ill, very ill at ease, but yet the calm of that evening’s sunshine had a sweet and tranquillizing effect.  There is a mirror—­there is certainly a moral mirror in our hearts, which reflects the images of the things around us; and every change that comes over nature’s face is mingled sweetly, though too often unnoticed, with the thoughts and feelings called forth by other things.  The effect of that calm evening upon Lennard Sherbrooke was not to produce the wild, bright, visionary dreams and expectations which seem the peculiar offspring of the glowing morning, or of the bright and risen day; but it was the counterpart, the image, the reflection of that evening scene itself to which it gave rise in his heart.  He felt tranquillized, he felt more resolute, more capable of enduring.  Grief and anxiety subsided into melancholy and resolution, and the sweet influence of the hour had also an effect beyond:  it made him pause upon the memories of his past life, upon many a scene of idle profligacy, revel, and riot,—­of talents cast away and opportunity neglected,—­of fortune spent and bright hopes blasted,—­and of all the great advantages which he had once possessed utterly lost and gone, with the exception of a kind and generous heart:  a jewel, indeed, but one which in this world, alas! can but too seldom be turned to the advantage of the possessor.

On these things he pondered, and a sweet and ennobling regret came upon him that it should be so—­a regret which might have gone on to sincere repentance, to firm amendment, to the retrieval of fortunes, to an utter change of destiny, had the circumstances of the times, or any friendly voice and helping hand, led his mind on upon that path wherein it had already taken the first step, and had opened out before him a way of retrieval, instead of forcing him onward down the hill of destruction.  But, alas! those were not times when the opportunity of doing better was likely to be allowed to him; nor were circumstances destined to change his course.  His destiny, like that of many Jacobites of the day, was but to be from ruin to ruin; and let it be remembered, that the character and history of Lennard Sherbrooke are not ideal, but are copied faithfully from a true but sad history of a life in those times.

All natural affections sweeten and purify the human heart.  Like everything else given us immediately from God, their natural tendency is to wage war against all that is evil within us; and every single thought of amendment and improvement, every regret for the past, every better hope for the future, was connected with the thought of the beautiful boy he had left behind at the inn; and elevated by his love for a being in the bright purity of youth, he thought of him and his situation again and again; and often as he did so, the intensity of his own feelings made him murmur forth half audible words all relating to the boy, or to the person he was then about to seek, for the purpose of interesting him in the poor youth’s fate.