"Your own Julia."

And this was the writing which had employed her time for days

before the sad catastrophe! And it was for this reason that she

asked, with so much earnestness, if I had been to my office on the

day when I drove Edgerton out into the woods for the adjustment of

our issue? No wonder that she was anxious at that moment. How much

depended upon that simple and ordinary proceeding. Had I but gone

that day to my office as usual!......

There were no longer doubts. There could be none. There was now

no mystery. It was all clear. The most ambiguous portions of her

conduct had been as easily and simply explained as the rest. But it

availed nothing! The blow had fallen. I was an accursed man--truly

accursed, and miserably desolate.

I still sat, stolid, seemingly, as the insensible chair which

sustained me, when Kingsley came in. He took the papers from my

unresisting hands. He read them in silence. I heard but one sentence

from his lips, and it came from them unconsciously:-"Poor, poor girl!"

I looked round and started to my feet. The tears were on on manly

checks. I hatched none. My eyes were dry! The fountains of tears

seemed shut up, arid and dusty.

"I must make atonement!" I exclaimed. "I must deliver myself up to

justice!"

"This is madness," said he, seizing my arm as I was about to leave

the room.

"No: retribution only! I have destroyed her. I must make the only

atonement which is in my power. I must die!"

"What you design is none," he said solemnly. "Your death will atone

nothing. It is by living only that you can atone!"

"How?"

"By repentance! This is the grand--the only sovereign atonement which

the spirit of man can ever make. There is no other mode provided

in nature. The laws, which would take your life, would deprive you

of the means of atonement. This is due to God; it can be performed

only by living and suffering. Life is a duty because it is an ordeal.

You must preserve life, as a sacred trust, for this reason. Even

if you were a felon--one wilfully resolving and coldly executing

crime--you were yet bound to preserve life! Throw it away, and

though you comply with the demand of social laws, you forfeit the

only chance of making atonement to those which are far superior.

Rather pray that life may be spared you. It was with this merciful

purpose that God not only permitted Cain to live, but commanded

that none should slay him. You must live for this!"

"Yet I slew HER!"

He did with me as he pleased. Three days after beheld us on our way

to the rich empire of Texas--its plains, rich but barren--unstocked,

wild-running to waste with its tangled weeds--needing, imploring

the vigorous hand of cultivation. Even such, at that moment, was

my heart! Rich in fertile affections, yet gone to waste; waiting,

craving, praying for the hand of the cultivator!--Yet who now was

that cultivator?




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