"Randall," she continued in the same
emotionless tone, "some money that I had saved
for the child, I have devoted to your defence,
and to procuring you certain comforts which
you will sadly need here. If you are guilty,
pray to be forgiven: if you are innocent, pray
—as I and Margaret will pray—that this
dark cloud may pass from us."

Her voice lingered in my ear, although she
had left the place. I returned to pace the
stone yard of the prison. At night, as I lay
awake upon the hard bed, those cold words,
so full of duty but so wanting in love, still
rang in my ears, resting like bars of lead
upon my heart. In a neighbouring cell were
two cheerful rogues, free from all mental
care, calmly planning crimes yet unperpetrated.
A dark, defiant spirit was on my
soul. I thought, perhaps, I should have
been as happy, if I had been as guilty, as
they. I fell into a short, uneasy sleep, in
which little Margaret appeared to me standing
at the gateway of the old mansion, with
her slight dress fluttering in the wind. She
was looking up and down the lane, and
crying for a missing friend who did not come;
and the faces of the cherubim in the carving
over the gate were turned in pity upon
her.

Twice again Esther visited me: still with
the same story; for young Mr. Picard had
not been found—still with the same tone—
still with the same look. At length, the day
of trial came. As I stood in the dock the
first person my eye fell upon in the Court
was Mr. Picard; his sallow face looking
sallower than ever, his small grey eyes peering
quickly and sharply about him. He was
there to watch over his family honour; to
obtain a conviction at any cost, and to favour,
the belief that I had either murdered his son,
or had compelled him to keep out of the way.
Esther was there, too, following the
proceedings with quiet intensity; her face
fixed as marble, and her eyes resting upon
me the whole time without a tear. It was
over at last, the long painful trial, and I
was convicted; sentenced to transportation
for life. I saw the triumph on Mr.
Picard's features; and, with glazed eyes I saw
Esther leave the Court with her dark veil
closely drawn over her face. She stooped,
and, I thought, sobbed; but I saw her no
more. In a few weeks I was on the high
seas, proceeding to a penal settlement.
Often in the dead of night the vision of
my fatherless child weeping in the gateway
of the old mansion passed before me, and
sometimes I heard her little gentle voice in
the wailing of the wind. The veil had fallen
over my lost home never to rise again—never
but once—years after.

Our vessel never reached her destination.
She was wrecked in the third month of our
voyage, and all on board, except myself and
another convict, were lost. We were picked
up by an American vessel; and, keeping our
secret as to what we were, we were landed
safely in New York. My companion went
his way, and I entered the service of a store-
keeper, and worked steadily for four years
—four long years, in which the vision of
my lost home was constantly before me.
Any feeling of resentment that I may have
felt at the suspicions of my wife, and at her
seeming indifference to my fate, was now
completely obliterated by the operation of
time and distance, and the old love I gave to
her as a girl came back in all its tenderness
and force. She appeared to me as the
guardian and protector of my dear fatherless
child, whom I had left sleeping
innocently in her little bed on the night when
the door of my lost home closed upon me.
My dreams by night, my one thought by
day, grew in intensity, until I could resist
the impulse no longer. Risking the chance
of discovery, I procured a passage, and
landed in London in the winter of the fifth
year from that in which I had left
England.

I took a lodging at a small public-house at
Wapping, near the river; and I neglected no
means to escape observation. I waited with
a beating, anxious heart impatiently for night;
and, when it came, I went forth well
disguised, keeping along the line of docks and
silent warehouses, until I reached the end of
the lane in which the old mansion stood. I
did not dare to make any inquiry to know if
Esther and the child were still at the old
home; but my knowledge of the character
and prospects of my wife, told me that, if the
firm had allowed her to stay, she would have
accepted the offer, as her principles and
determination would have sustained her under
any feeling of disgrace. I walked slowly up
the old familiar lane, until I stood before the
gateway. It was near eight o'clock, and the
gate was closed, but it looked the same as it
did when I first knew it as a boy; so did the
quaint oak carving, and the silent court-yard,
seen through the small grating. There were
no lights in the front, and I went cautiously
round, up a side lane, and along a narrow
passage that ran between the churchyard and the
back of the house. At that moment the church
clock struck eight, and the bells chimed the
Evening Hymn, slowly and musically, as they
had done, perhaps, for centuries; slowly and
musically, as they had done in the days gone
by, while I sat at the window with little
Margaret in my arms, nursing her to sleep. A
flood of memories came across my heart.
Forgetful of the object that had brought
me there I leant against the railings and
wept.

The chimes ceased, and the spell was
broken.  I was recalled to the momentous task
that lay before me. I approached, with a
trembling step, the window of what used to
be our sitting-room on the ground-floor. I
saw lights through the crevices of the
closed shutters. Putting my ear closely