IV.

Ambrose Bradley to Alma Craik.

DEAREST ALMA,-You tell me in your letter that you have said nothing of the thoughts that struggle within you for utterance; alas! your words are only too eloquent, less in what they say than in what they leave unsaid. If I required any reminder of the mischief I have wrought, of the beautiful dream that I have destroyed, it would come to me in the pathetic reticence of the letter I have just received. Would to God that you had never known me! Would to God that, having known me, you would have despised me as I deserved! I was unworthy even to touch the hem of your garment. I am like a wretch

who has profaned the altar of a saint. Your patience and devotion are an eternal rebuke. I could bear your bitter blame; I cannot bear your forgiveness.

I am here as you left me; a guilty, conscience-stricken creature struggling in a world of nightmares. Nothing now seems substantial, permanent, or true. Every time that I stand up before my congregation I am like a shadow addressing shadows; thought and language both fail me, and I know not what platitudes flow from my lips; but when I am left alone again, I awaken as from a dream to the horrible reality of my guilt and my despair.

I have thought it all over again and again, trying to discover some course by which I might bring succour to myself and peace to

her I love; and whichever way I look, I see but one path of escape, the rayless descent of death. For, so long as I live, I darken your sunshine. My very existence is a reminder to you of what I am, of what I might have been. But there, I will not pain you with my penitence, and I will hush my self-reproaches in deference to your desire. Though the staff you placed in my hand has become a reed, and though I seem to have no longer any foothold on the solid ground of life, I will try to struggle on.

I dare not ask you to write to me-it seems an outrage to beg for such a blessing; yet I know that you will pity me, and write again. Ever yours,

AMBROSE BRADLEY.

CHAPTER XXIII.

ALMA'S WANDERINGS.

Scoff not at Rome, or if thou scoff beware
Her vengeance waiting in the heaven and air;
Her love is blessing, and her hate, despair.
Yet see! how low the hoary mother lies,
Prone on her face beneath the lonely skies-
On her head ashes, dust upon her eyes.

Men smile and pass, but many pitying stand,
And some stoop down to kiss her withered hand,
Whose sceptre is a reed, whose crown is sand.

Think'st thou no pulse beats in that bounteous breast
Which once sent throbs of rapture east and west ?
Nay, but she liveth, mighty tho' opprest.

Her arm could reach as low as hell, as high
As the white mountains and the starry sky;
She filled the empty heavens with her cry.
Wait but a space, and watch-her trance of pain
Shall dry away-her tears shall cease as rain-
Queen of the nations, she shall smile again!

THE LADDER OF ST. AUGUSTINE.

BRADLEY'S letter was fowarded from Lucerne

after some little delay, and reached Miss Craik at Brieg, just as she was preparing to proceed by private conveyance to Domo d'Ossola. She had taken the carriage and pair for herself and her maid, a young Frenchwoman; and as the vehicle rounded its zigzag course towards the Klenenhorn, she perused the epistle line by line, until she had learned almost every word by heart.

Then, with the letter lying in her lap, she gazed sadly, almost vacantly, around her on the gloomy forests and distant hills, the precipices spanned by aerial bridges, the quaint villages clinging like birds'-nests here and there, the dark vistas of mountain side gashed by torrents frozen by distance to dazzling white.

Dreary beyond measure, though the skies