The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-08-18

spair and pity were all for the mo- ment hushed. I was only conscious of envy and longing to share the still repose to which that worn and tor tured spirit had attained. Her beauty had never faded in all those years oi perpetual anxiety and hardship; it had only become moro and more spir- itual in proportion as she grew worn and wasted. She lay now 90 quiet at last, after Ife's fitful fever. Do you remember how delicate and fine her features were? They were still mora sharply chiseled after these four years. The long black lashes rested on her cheeks; her dark crisp hair, waving low on the forehead, was crowned with the dropping, faded wreath her husband had made for her in the last hour of his life. I don't know how long stood there, but at last Inch keith came and led me away and shut the door.
 AS soon as Luigi was we'll enough to move l took him to England, and Inchkeith left us to go to Amer ica. Bellamonte's aunt was dead, and I, in any case, should have taken charge of him. It was long before the boy grew comparatively strong in body; his memory and reasoning powers never came back, and never will. AS you see him now, 80 he has been ever since, and so he will remain to the end. He remembers nothing of that day except what he calls black cloud; all that went before, all recol- lection of his father and mother, has completely gone. But though he has no idea of the meaning of that black cloud which came over him, strangely enough the presence of any German, the sound ot that language, which was the one spoken by those who put his father to death, throws him into the wild state of excitement you saw to- night.
 "There, Holbrook! Now you know all. Can you wonder that feel my self 6 murderer? Can ever your cheerful optimism stand against a case like this?"
 For some minutes could not speak; the strange and tragic tale had absorbed me completely. The old church clock struck one, the night jar was busy with his eerie whirr in the dark and fragrant meadow close by. At last I recollected myself, but all the words that rose to my lips seemed hopelessly lame and inadequate to meet such case as this.
 "My poor Atherstone," said, "you do wrong to embitter your life with these vain and needless self-re- breaches. You and they were the victims of cruel accident; that was all. From the first you acted from the highest motives; that is the most We can any ot us do. You are not to blame; indeed, you are not to blame for any part of it."
 "I am to blame," he said. "An un- disciplined nature, carried away by every nasty impulse, is always to blame, and may, like me, bring more fatal woe upon its fellow creatures than many wretch who is hung on the gallows."
 "Do not allow yourself to magnify your share of the blame-since you insist upon its being such-in this ex- travagant way" said. "Is not this in itself one of those ill-regulated ten- dencies which you condemn 80 se- verely? Is the prime of your life, the years that are ripe for achievement, to be squandered in useless regrets and that vain misery of remorse in which no man has a right to consume the powers that still remain to him for the service of mankind? When once lesson is learned, when once 1t is we'll branded in, then away with this enervating paralysis of remorse, which is in itself almost as mischievous as crime"
 I was mounted on my favorite hobby now, from which 1t is always difficult to dislodge me, but I spare my readers the bulk of my discourse. For some time longer I exhorted and argued with him, but I doubt whether succeeded in Tightening any portion of his load. It is seldom that it is granted to any human creature to be of much real help or comfort to any other where his need is the sorest.
 We got through the next day very we'll on the whole. Hans was tempo rally banished from the scene, and poor Luigi resumed his usual docile and smiling demeanor. though occa- sionally he looked about him anx- iously, in the way that some people do when they feel that there is a cat in the room. l discovered, however, that one power had remained to him in the general wreck. He had the most sympathetic and beautiful voice l ever heard, and sang with a power and expression that must have been purely iustinctive, seeing that the words on his lips probably conveyed little or no meaning to him. There