Part 1 — THE BROTHER AND SISTER.

———

BY MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY.

———

In the days of my early childhood, the little village of ——, separated by green hills and broad fields from the busy city, formed one of the pleasantest summer resorts of the wealthy inhabitants of New York. Many a stately villa was reared upon the banks of the Hudson, many a neat country-house sheltered itself within the winding lanes which traversed the village, for its vicinity to the great mart offered irresistible temptations to those whose hands were chained to the galley of commerce, while their hearts were still wedded to nature. One of the fairest pictures in the “chambers of mine imagery” is that of a large old-fashioned mansion, seated in the midst of a garden “too trim for nature, and too rude for art,” where a long avenue of cherry trees threw a pleasant shade across the lawn, while a rude swing, suspended between two of these sturdy old denizens of the soil, afforded a cool and delightful lounge to the studious and imaginative child. My earliest days were passed in that pleasant home, and my earliest lessons of wisdom learned in the school of that pretty village; therefore it is that my thoughts love to linger around those scenes, and therefore it is that I have fancied others might find something of interest in one of my reminiscences.

My shortest road to school led through a narrow green lane, rarely traversed by the gay vehicles which dashed along the main avenues of the village, and I was delighted to find such a quiet and shady path, where the turf was always so soft, and the air so fragrant with the breath of flowers. But I was soon induced to take a wide circuit rather than pass the solitary cottage which stood within that secluded lane. It was a low one-story building, with a broad projecting roof, throwing the narrow windows far into shade; and, as if to add to its sombre appearance, some former occupant had painted the house a dull lead color, which, by the frequent washings of the rain, and powderings of wayside dust, had assumed the grayish tint that gave to the cottage its distinctive appellation. Every village has its haunted house, and an evil name had early fallen on the “gray cottage.” Behind it, and so near that three paces from the little porch would lead a person to its very brink, was a deep and rocky ravine, forming a basin for the waters of a rapid brook, which, after flowing in sunshine and music through half the village, fell with sullen plash into the gloom of this wild dell. Some dark and half forgotten tale of guilt had added the horrors of superstition to the natural melancholy of the place, and few of the humbler inhabitants of the neighborhood would have been willing to stand after sunset on the brink of the Robbers’ Glen. It was said that the house, in former times, had been the abode of wicked and desperate men. The earth of the cellar beneath it was heaved up with hillocks like graves, and supernatural sounds had been heard to issue from these mysterious mounds. For many years it had stood untenanted, and the boys of the village often amused themselves by pelting it, at a cautious distance, with stones.

But a “haunted house” had great attractions for the mind of one who revelled in fancies of the wild and wonderful. I was exceedingly anxious to behold the interior of the lonely cottage, which had now become invested with so much dignity in my eyes, and finding a few companions of like spirit, we determined to visit it. We accordingly fixed upon a certain Saturday afternoon, and determined to find some means of ingress into the barred and bolted cottage. A gay and light-hearted troop were we, as we scrambled over rail fences, gathered our aprons full of wild flowers, or chased the bright butterflies which mocked our glad pursuit. But as we entered the lane our merry shouts of laughter ceased, each looked earnestly in the face of the other, as if, for the first time, sensible of the mysterious importance of our undertaking, and, but for shame, several would have retraced their steps. I believe not one of us was insensible to the gloom which seemed suddenly to fall upon us, and as we looked towards the cottage, standing in the deep shadow of a spreading elm, while all else within the lane was glistening in the slant beams of the declining sun, we almost feared to approach the darkened spot. Cautiously advancing, however, and peeping through the rusted keyhole, we found our curiosity entirely baffled by the total darkness of the interior. It was proposed that we should climb the fence and attempt an entrance from the rear of the building, where we should be less likely to be interrupted or discovered by wayfarers, and after a brief consultation, held in hurried whispers, we resolved upon the daring feat. Silently treading the margin of the Robbers’ Glen, we reached the back porch of the little cottage, and beheld one of the window shutters open. We looked into the apartment but saw nothing save the naked walls of the dilapidated room, and as one of our party turned the latch of the door, to our great astonishment, it yielded to the touch and allowed us free entrance. Half frightened at our own success, we stood huddled together in the narrow passage, hesitating to advance, when suddenly a tall woman, clad in the deepest black, and displaying a countenance as white and (as it seemed to our excited fancies) as ghostly and rigid as a sheeted corpse, stood in the midst of us. How we ever got out of the house I cannot tell. I remember our desperate speed, the wild and headlong haste with which we threw ourselves over the low fence, and the total exhaustion we felt when once fairly escaped from that frightful place. As we lay on the grass, to rest before returning home, each one told her own story of that terrible apparition. None had heard a footstep when that fearful woman came among us; none had seen her approach, and though the sound of our own buzzing voices, and the fixed attention with which we were just then regarding the door of the apartment, which we wished yet dreaded to enter, might easily account for both these circumstances, yet we all came to the conclusion that we had seen a ghost, or, at the least, a witch.

On the following Sunday we were scarcely less alarmed, for, just as the services were commencing, the same tall figure, arrayed in deep mourning and veiled to her very feet, slowly proceeded up the aisle and took her seat on the step of the altar. My blood ran cold as I looked upon her, and when I afterwards heard that she had recently become the occupant of the gray cottage, my dread of her supernatural powers gave place to a belief that she was in some way or other mysteriously connected with the guilty deeds of which that cottage had been the scene. I did not trouble myself to remember that the events which had flung such horror around the Robbers’ Glen must have occurred at least half a century previous, and therefore could have little to do with a woman yet in the prime of life. The curiosity which her presence excited was not confined to the children of the village. Her tall stature, her sombre garb, her veiled face, and her singular choice of a place of abode excited the conjectures of many an older and wiser head. But whatever interest her appearance had awakened, it was not destined to be satisfied. Those who, led by curiosity or real kindness, sought to visit her, were repulsed from the threshold; no one was allowed to enter her house; all prying inquiries were silenced, either by stern reserve or bitter vituperations; even the village pastor was refused admittance to her solitude; and, after months and even years, as little was known of her as on the day she first appeared. She lived entirely alone; once in each week she was seen walking towards the city, and on Sunday she was regularly to be found at the foot of the pulpit—but beyond this nothing was to be discovered. Few, very few, had ever distinctly seen the face whose paleness gleamed out from the folds of her thick veil, and, after some time, the people found other objects of interest, while the children carefully avoided all approach to the haunted cottage, and could scarcely repress a shudder of horror as they heard the low rustle of her dusky garments on each returning Sunday.

Years passed on; circumstances occurred to remove me from the village, and the various changes which the heart experiences between the period of joyous childhood and earnest womanhood, had almost effaced from my mind all recollection of the “black witch,” when I was unexpectedly and rather strangely made acquainted with her true history. It was a tale of ordinary trials and sorrows, such as might have befallen many others, and yet there are peculiarities in the sufferings of every individual as strongly marked as are the traits of character. There was no supernatural interest in her story, but it invested her in my mind with the dignity of unmerited sorrow, and it enables me to open for your perusal, gentle reader, another of the many strange written pages of human nature.

For more than twelve years Madeline Graham had been an only child, the darling of her invalid mother, and the pride of her doting father, when the birth of a brother opened a new channel for the affections of all the family. During the earliest period of his infancy the child seemed feebly struggling for existence, but he gradually acquired strength to resist the frequent attacks of disease, and though he gave no promise of robust health, his constitution seemed sufficiently invigorated to warrant a hope of prolonged life. The most unwearied exertions, however, were necessary, and his guidance over the very threshold of being was a task of more difficulty than the lifelong care of a hardy and healthy child. Yet the anxiety which his precarious state awakened, and the constant attention which he required, seemed to endear him the more closely to the little family. He became their idol, the object of their incessant solicitude, and comfort, happiness, even life itself was sacrificed to his welfare. Ere he had attained his third year, Mrs. Graham, who had long been in declining health, sank beneath the fatigue and anxiety she had endured, while, with her dying breath, she enjoined upon Madeline the most devoted attention to her darling boy. Madeline scarcely needed such admonition, for, from his very birth, her brother had been the object of her passionate love; but such a charge, given at such a solemn moment, sank deep into the heart of the young and sensitive girl. Falling on her knees beside her mother, she uttered a solemn vow that no earthly affection and no other duty should ever induce her to place her brother’s interests secondary to her own. A smile of grateful tenderness lit up the face of the dying woman, and her last glance thanked Madeline for the self-sacrifice to which she had thus unconsciously pledged herself.

From that hour the young Alfred became his sister’s especial charge. Young as she was, her father knew that he could trust her latent strength of character, and when she took her brother, even as a child, to her bosom, he felt assured that his boy would never need a mother’s care.

Madeline Graham was no common character. Though she had scarcely counted her fifteenth summer, she had grown up tall and stately, with a face almost severe in its fixed and classical beauty, while her manners, calm almost to coldness, were scarcely such as are usually found connected with youthful feeling and girlish simplicity. Educated solely by her parents, Madeline had acquired some of the characteristic traits of both. To her mother’s morbid sensibility and enthusiasm she united her father’s reserve and fixedness of purpose. She possessed strong passions, but an innate power of repressing them seemed born with them. Her love for truth was unbounded; even the common courtesies of society seemed to her but as so many fetters on the limbs of the goddess of her idolatry, and, therefore, even in her girlhood, her manners had become characterized by a sincerity almost amounting to brusquerie. Her talents were of the highest order, and her habits of reflection, which were singularly developed in one so young, enabled her to reap a rich harvest of knowledge from her father’s careful culture. She was one to be admired, and praised, and wondered at, but she was scarcely calculated to awaken affection. The spontaneous gush of feeling, the guileless frankness of a heart that knows no evil and dreads no danger, the warm sympathy of a youthful nature, the sweet susceptibility which, though dangerous to its possessor, is yet so winning a trait of girlish character—all these attributes, which seem to belong to the spring-time of life, even as the buds and blossoms are inseparably connected with the renewed youth of the visible creation, were wanting to Madeline.

But it was from the religious opinions of her parents that the deepest tint of coloring was imparted to the mind of Madeline. Mrs. Graham, a lineal descendant of one of the sternest and most intolerant of the puritans, had early united herself to one of the strictest of strict sects, and had been accustomed to practise a system of self-denial as rigid, if not quite as visible, as the penances of cloistered austerity. The impulses of innocent gaiety, the promptings of harmless vanity, the wanderings of youthful fancy were regarded by her only as evidences of a sinful nature, which ought to awaken remorse as keen as that which visits the penitent bosom of deep-dyed guilt. In the enthusiasm of her early zeal she seemed lifted above the weaknesses of humanity, and even the gray-headed members of the Christian community looked upon her as a chosen servant of the truth. But her excitement had been too great; the hour of reaction came, and it was when lukewarmness and weariness had taken full possession of her feelings for a season, that she first met with her future husband. Ever in extremes, an earthly passion now absorbed the heart which had consumed its energies in zeal without knowledge, and she married Mr. Graham without allowing herself to look upon the broad line of separation which lay between them. Had she ever made religion a question she would have learned the fact; for if good taste forbade him to obtrude his opinions upon others, yet love of truth prevented him from seeking to conceal them. Mr. Graham was a skeptic. The great truths of revealed religion were to him but as fables to amuse the multitude; and while in the works of creation he recognised the hand of a Deity, he read not in the hearts of men the necessity of a Redeemer. Mrs. Graham was horror-stricken when she discovered that her husband was not a Christian, and in proportion as the ardor of youthful passion faded into the tender light of conjugal affection, the terrible abyss which yawned between them became more painfully visible to her sight. The attempt to change his opinions again awakened her slumbering zeal, and with all the penitence of one who was conscious of having fallen from a state of elevated piety, she endeavored to make amends for her temporary alienation by renewed devotion. But her system of ascetic severity was little calculated to make religion attractive to her husband. The “beauty of holiness” was hidden beneath the sackcloth and ashes with which her mistaken judgment endued it, and Mr. Graham learned to look upon her piety as the one defect, rather than the crowning grace, in his wife’s character. Her sincere affection, and a desire to preserve domestic harmony, at length compelled her to give up all attempts to change her husband’s opinions, and she was therefore doomed to cherish a secret sorrow which wasted her very life away. The ascetic devotion which seemed so unlovely to the husband, produced a very different effect upon the imagination of Madeline. Accustomed to regard her mother as the best of human beings, she early learned to reverence and imitate her fervent zeal. Her reserve of character induced her to conceal her impressions even from the mother who labored to deepen them, and no one suspected the severe self-discipline which, even in childhood, she practised in imitation of her parent’s example. Her father, who, while despising Christianity, yet paid it the involuntary homage of considering it a very proper safeguard for women and children, did not attempt to interfere in her religious education. He contented himself with cultivating the field of mind, and left her mother to sow her moral nature with the tares of prejudice along with the seed of true piety.

Madeline had scarcely attained her twentieth year when a sudden and violent illness deprived her of her father, and left her the sole guardian of her young brother. Upon looking into Mr. Graham’s affairs, it was found that his profession had only procured for him a comfortable subsistence, and, as his income died with him, the orphans were almost penniless. The small house which they had long occupied, together with its furniture and a library of some value, were all that remained. To convert these into money was Madeline’s first care, and her next step was to invest the amount thus obtained in the name of her brother, as a fund for his education and future subsistence. For herself she seemed to have no anxieties, and with a degree of disinterestedness, as rare as it was praiseworthy, she determined to derive her own maintenance from the labor of her hands. With characteristic energy she made all her arrangements without consulting any one, or asking the advice of her father’s best friends. The bold self-reliance which formed her most striking and least amiable trait was now fully developed, and she felt no need of other aid than that of her own strong mind. She had a deep design to work out in future—a darling scheme to mature—a hope, which in her stern nature assumed the form of a determination to compass, and all sacrifices seemed light which could aid her to a successful issue. Need I add, that her brother was the object of all her future aspirations.

Alfred Graham had already given evidence of precocious genius which seemed fully to justify Madeline’s ambition. Nature in his case had displayed her usual compensating kindness, and since she had bestowed on him a dwarfed and diminutive form, a delicate and fragile body, made amends by giving him a countenance of almost feminine beauty, and a mind filled with the most exquisite perceptions. He was born a poet. His fervid feelings, his nervous temperament, his delicate sense of beauty in the moral and physical world—even the very fragility of constitution which shut him out from the rude conflicts of real life, and confined him within the limits of the fairyland of reverie—all seemed to point out his future vocation. Too young to frame in numbers the fancies of his childish hours, he yet breathed into his sister’s ear the eloquent words of pure and passionless enthusiasm, and Madeline’s heart thrilled with high hopes of his future glory. But she did not suffer nature to direct his course. Long ere the child had seriously commenced the work of education, she had destined him to become an apostle of Christianity to the benighted world of paganism. Imaginative, high minded, stern, and self-sacrificing, Madeline was just such a woman as in the olden time might have embroidered the cross upon the mantle of her best beloved one, and sent him forth to fight the battles of the holy church. But the missionary of modern days has a far more difficult and therefore far nobler office to perform. Amid belted knights and men-at-arms to do battle with myriads of the Paynim foe is a lighter task than that which falls upon him, who goes forth alone and single handed to face the more insidious foes of ignorance and sin amid the blinded and perverse heathen. Yet such was the high and holy duty to which Madeline destined her brother, while her own ambition was limited to the hope of being the companion of his toils and his labors. She looked forward to the time when they should go forth hand in hand into the howling wilderness of superstition, with the gospel as a light to their feet and a lamp to their path, while they scattered the blessings of truth among the benighted idolaters of distant lands.

As Alfred advanced in life he learned the full extent of his sister’s sacrifices for his welfare. He saw her relinquishing all the intellectual pleasures she had once enjoyed, and devoting herself day and night to the humble labors of the needle. He noticed her attention to his most trifling wishes, and he did not fail to observe that while his dress was of the neatest and finest texture, and his food of the delicate kind which best suited the capricious appetite of an invalid, Madeline practised the strictest economy in all that affected only her own individual comfort. Yet Alfred did not love Madeline with the entire affection which could alone repay her devotedness. There was too much awe, too much fear blended with his feelings towards her. Her strong mind and stern integrity seemed ever ready to rebuke the vacillating temper and morbid sensibility of the youth. Superior to temptations which had no power over herself, she had little charity for the failings of another; and the boyish errors, often but the earliest trial of principles which the world will hereafter put to a far more severe test—were regarded by her as heavy sins. Educated in the seclusion of home, she could not imagine the dangers which beset a boy from his first entrance into the miniature world of a large school. Instead of rewarding with her approbation the first struggles of principle with passion in the youthful heart, she seemed only shocked and mortified that any conflict should have been necessary, and was more keenly sensible to the weakness which had required defence, than to the strength which had offered resistance. Such mistaken views of character soon checked the flow of confidence between them. Alfred could not open his whole heart to one who was incapable of comprehending all his feelings, and though he never needed a mother’s care, he early learned the want of a mother’s sympathy.

Madeline had seen sufficient proofs of Alfred’s facile temper and instability of purpose to dread his introduction into scenes of greater temptation, and, vainly fancying that he would be safer any where than in the busy city, she preferred that he should enter a distant college. At the age of seventeen he was removed from his sister’s influence to enter upon his new course of studies, and although at first truly unhappy at this separation from his only relative, it was not long before the absence of her keen eye and stern rebuke became a positive relief to him. Hitherto his life had passed amid the sombre shades of domestic life, and with all Madeline’s noble traits of character, she lacked the tact, so truly feminine, which enables a woman to throw sunshine around the humblest home. The cheerful song, the pleasant jest, the merry voice, the bright smile, the buoyant step—all the lighter graces without which a woman’s character, however elevated and noble, is but as a Corinthian column without its capital, or as a rose without its perfume—were wanting to the unbending nature of Madeline. The world was to her a scene of probation and preparation, and to waste a thought upon enlivening its grave duties seemed to her as idle as planting flowers around a sepulchre. When therefore Alfred found himself amid a throng of young men from every part of the country—some ambitious of renown, some fond of study for its own sake, some utterly careless of present duties, some slothful and indifferent to honor, but all equally alive to pleasurable excitement and equally eager in the pursuit of amusement, he felt as if he had suddenly been transported to a world of which he had never dreamed. His susceptible temper rendered him an easy prey to the lures of gay society. Intellectual enjoyments mingled their pure odors with the fumes of the wine cup, and the refinements of elegant taste served to veil the native deformity of vice, until, long before he had learned the danger of his position, he was bound in the strong toils of sensual indulgence. Full of intellect, and wonderfully acute in his perceptions, he soon became distinguished for his genius, and the heart of his sister was often gladdened by tidings of his success. But she knew not that he was drinking from more turbid waters than those which flow from the fountain of wisdom—she dreamed not that the offering which she hoped to bring pure and unpolluted to the altar of Heaven was already blemished and unworthy to be presented.

Alfred Graham was not designed by nature to be a votary of evil. Temptation had found him weak to resist, but conscience was still true to her charge, and the youth was as free from habitual vice as he was destitute of unsullied virtue. When the vacations brought him to his quiet home, the better feelings of his nature were ever aroused; he respected the virtue of his sister’s character, and when surrounded by that pure atmosphere which envelopes real goodness, he forgot even to harbor a sinful thought. But day by day the profession to which he was destined became more repugnant to his feelings, and after deferring as long as possible the announcement of his wishes, he at length summoned courage to reveal the truth to his sister. The blow fell upon Madeline with almost stunning violence. He had just left college crowned with honors and flushed with success, and Madeline was exulting in the hope of his future usefulness, when he revealed to her his change of purpose. The first intimation of his unwillingness to devote himself to the church, almost drove her to frenzy. All the violence of her secret nature broke forth in the fearful threats of temporal and eternal punishment which she predicted for such apostacy, and Alfred’s feeble temper was actually crushed beneath the weight of her indignation. He trembled at the storm which he had raised, and when, after days of entreaty and expostulation, Madeline, the stern, proud Madeline, even knelt at his feet, and implored the child of her affections to listen to the voice of God, speaking by the lips of her who had ever been as a mother to his heart, the weak youth yielded to her prayers and promised what he well knew he could not conscientiously perform. His was not the free-will offering of talents and time and health and strength in the service of the Redeemer. He entered the sanctuary as one driven onward by irresistible force, not as one drawn by the cords of love and piety.

Time passed on and taught Alfred a lesson of deep hypocrisy. His timid and feeble nature could neither resist the influence of evil nor brave its consequences, and therefore it was that the fair face of the youth became more and more characterized by sanctity in proportion as his heart became less susceptible of its influences. Happy is it for mankind that the eye rarely pierces beneath the veil which conceals the hideous depravity of the heart. Who but would have shrunk from the delicate beauty of Alfred’s gentle countenance—who but would have shuddered at the contemplation of those clear blue eyes, that feminine complexion, the delicate rose tint of his thin cheek, and the exceeding loveliness of his chiselled and flexible lips, if the dark mass of evil thoughts which lay beneath that fair seeming, could have been discerned. Yet Alfred was far from being happy. Unstable as water, he had no power over his own impulses, and remorse preyed upon him, even while he sought to drown his senses in indulgence. Conscience was his perpetual tormentor, and yet a constant course of sinning and repenting left him neither time nor will to struggle effectually with his errors.

But a still darker change came upon his character. His health, which had several times required a suspension of his studies, began again to fail, a short time before the period fixed upon for his ordination, and he eagerly seized the opportunity of deferring the dreaded ordeal. The physicians ordered perfect relaxation from all mental labors, and unfortunately for his future peace, the listlessness of unwonted idleness led him to examine a chest of old papers, the accumulated records of many years, where he accidentally met with a catalogue of his father’s library. Alfred was so young at the time of his father’s death that he retained little recollection of him, and Madeline had carefully kept him in ignorance of those skeptical opinions which had so grieved both mother and daughter. It was with no little surprise, therefore, that Alfred found the names of so great a number of infidel works among his father’s books. He pondered long upon the subject, and at length conjectured the truth. This excited his interest, and a vague curiosity, awakened rather by a belief in his sister’s desire to conceal from him his father’s opinions, led him secretly to procure the prohibited volumes. Upon the feeble mind of one who was “blown about by every wind of doctrine,” and who yearned after worldly pleasures while he shrunk with unutterable disgust from religious duties, the subtleties of the skeptics had a most fatal effect. He had never been well grounded in the faith, and the doubts now suggested to his mind were exactly such things as in his present state of feeling he would gladly have adopted as truths. These six months of respite from theological studies were spent in the careful perusal of all skeptical writings, and when Alfred resumed his former pursuits the plague spot of infidelity had already given evidence of the fatal disease which was spreading over his moral nature.

If my tale were designed only for the eye of the student of human nature, I might dwell long upon the strange incongruity of feeling and action, the wonderful contrariety between principle and practice, and all the complicated workings of a wayward heart, which characterized the deceptive course of the young student. With his usual timid hypocrisy he concealed every real feeling, every genuine impulse. His conduct was apparently irreproachable, his principles seemed unimpeachable, and he even schooled himself to come forward and enrol himself beneath the banner of the cross, when he was but too conscious that he had already trampled the holy emblem beneath his feet. Why did he carry his deceit to such an awful extent? Alas! who can tell just where the waves of sin may stay their whelming force? He feared the world’s dread laugh at his apostacy, he shrunk from the scorn of all good men, and, above all, his mind absolutely cowered at the thought of his sister’s bitter wrath. So he buried his secret within his own bosom, and trusting to some future chance to rescue him from the irksome duties of his profession, prepared himself for the ceremony of ordination. But he was not yet sensible of the terrible power of Conscience.

The day came, and, as usual, crowds were assembled to witness the dedication of the youthful candidates. The two young men—for Alfred had a companion, a pious, humble-minded, meek-hearted youth—stood before the altar to offer their vows. Madeline, the weeping but happy Madeline—who had sacrificed her youth and health and beauty, aye and the hopes ever dearest to a woman’s heart, to this one darling hope—was there too, and as she looked on her brother bending before the altar, while his bright curls just caught one straggling sunbeam which shed a glory around his youthful brow, she was heard to murmur “Lo, here am I, Lord, and the child which thou hast given me.”

The services commenced—the prayers of the congregation had arisen to Heaven, the incense of praise had floated upward on the solemn melody of the organ, the exhortation to the candidates had been affectionately uttered by an aged pastor, and the moment came when the presentation of the two was made to the Bishop by the officiating clergyman. The solemn appeal was then uttered⁠—

“Brethren, if there be any of you who knoweth any impediment or any notable crime on either of these persons for the which he ought not to be admitted to the holy office, let him come forth in the name of God and show what the crime or impediment is.”

At these words a sudden terror seemed to seize upon Alfred Graham. His frame shook with suppressed emotion, his countenance became livid, and his fine features were strangely contorted as if some sudden pang had convulsed him. The next instant he uttered a faint cry and fell prostrate to the ground, while his very life-blood was poured at the foot of the altar which he had dared to touch with polluted hands.

He was borne to his home in utter insensibility. The sting of conscience had finished the work which disease had long since begun, and the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs had been the consequence of his unnatural excitement and self-command. All that medical skill could effect was tried, but without success, and ere the lapse of another day it was known that Alfred Graham was sinking into the arms of death. There was no time for repentance—no time to combat prejudices and awaken better impulses. He lay as if in the deep torpor of insensibility, until aroused by some cordial administered by his physician, when his strength seemed to rally, and raising himself on his pillow, he addressed his sister in words which fell like molten lead upon her heart. With all the eloquence of passion he poured forth a wild confession of his errors and his doubts, and then, in language equally fervid but far more bitter, he reproached her—her who had devoted her whole life to his welfare—as the cause of all his guilt. He accused her of having crushed his timid spirit by sternness and unbending rigor—of having taught him hypocrisy by her fierce contempt for his weaknesses—of having killed him by forcing him to a profession which he hated and contemned.

“I am not mad, Madeline,” he exclaimed, in a hoarse voice, broken by his difficult and long-drawn breath, “I am not mad, but so surely as I am now stretched upon the bed of death, so surely has your ambition and your mistaken zeal laid me here to die. I seek not to excuse myself, and may God forgive me my many secret sins; but never, never would my soul have been so deeply stained had it not been for your unrelenting indignation at my boyish follies, and your determined will in the choice of my future destiny. I forgive you, Madeline, but you will not forgive yourself.”

The exertion of uttering these terrible words was too great, and ere the sounds yet died upon the ear of the horror-stricken sister, the spirit of the misguided youth had gone to its dread account.

From that hour Madeline was utterly and entirely changed. Whatever were her feelings she shared them with none, but shrunk alike from question and sympathy. Those dying reproaches, unjust as she felt them to be, were yet engraven in ineffacable characters upon her heart, and with a feeling akin to the mistaken austerity which punishes the body for the sins of the soul, she resolved to make her future life a penance for her involuntary error. Lonely and desolate, she took up her abode in a place well suited to her embittered and almost misanthropic feelings. For more than ten years the gray cottage was her abode, and the labors of the seamstress furnished her scanty subsistence. During all that period not a creature was ever admitted beyond the threshold of her door, and all curiosity about her had quite subsided long before the termination of her lonely career. At length she was missed from her usual lowly seat in church. A second Sabbath came, and still the black and veiled form of the recluse was not seen. Common humanity demanded some inquiry into her fate, and after several vain attempts to procure admission into the cottage, the door was forced. Upon a truss of straw, in one corner of the desolate chamber, lay the emaciated form of the unfortunate Madeline, stiff, and cold, and ghastly, as if days had passed since the spirit had escaped from its clay tenement. She died as she had lived, lonely, and unknown, for it was not until years had elapsed that I heard the story of the brother and the sister from the lips of one who had known them in early days; while other incidental circumstances enabled me to identify Madeline Graham with the tall “weird woman” who had so terrified my childish fancy.

The erring brother sleeps beneath the shadow of the sanctuary, in ground still consecrated by holy usage, but all trace of the hapless sister has vanished from the earth. The village graveyard is now a populous highway, bordered by tall houses and traversed by busy feet, while the green hillock which once marked the burial place of Madeline Graham has long since been crushed beneath the weight of pavements, echoing to the noisy tread of many a thoughtless wayfarer.

Alas, for human love! and, alas, for human error! How dreary and desolate would seem many a scene of unmerited suffering did we not know that there is a brighter world, where all tears shall be wiped from all eyes, and where there shall be no sorrow nor sighing through an eternity of happiness!