“Are you so soon weary of this quiet retreat?”
demanded her guide, continuing to wear the same sneering
smile. “Or has your anxiety for your father
induced you to set forth alone in quest of the afflicted
old man?”
“Oh, if I were but with him!” exclaimed
Ellen. “But this place is lonely and fearful;
and I cannot endure to remain here.”
“Lonely, is it, sweet Ellen?” he rejoined;
“am I not with you? Yes, it is lonely,—lonely
as guilt could wish. Cry aloud, Ellen, and spare
not. Shriek, and see if there be any among these
rocks and woods to hearken to you!”
“There is, there is One,” exclaimed Ellen,
shuddering, and affrighted at the fearful meaning
of his countenance. “He is here! He
is there!” And she pointed to heaven.
“It may be so, dearest,” he replied.
“But if there be an Ear that hears, and an Eye
that sees all the evil of the earth, yet the Arm is
slow to avenge. Else why do I stand before you
a living man?”
“His vengeance may be delayed for a time, but
not forever,” she answered, gathering a desperate
courage from the extremity of her fear.
“You say true, lovely Ellen; and I have done
enough, erenow, to insure its heaviest weight.
There is a pass, when evil deeds can add nothing to
guilt, nor good ones take anything from it.”
“Think of your mother,—of her sorrow
through life, and perhaps even after death,”
Ellen began to say. But, as she spoke these words,
the expression of his face was changed, becoming suddenly
so dark and fiend-like, that she clasped her hands,
and fell on her knees before him.
“I have thought of my mother,” he replied,
speaking very low, and putting his face close to hers.
“I remember the neglect, the wrong, the lingering
and miserable death, that she received at my hands.
By what claim can either man or woman henceforth expect
mercy from me? If God will help you, be it so;
but by those words you have turned my heart to stone.”
At this period of their conversation, when Ellen’s
peril seemed most imminent, the attention of both
was attracted by a fragment of rock, which, falling
from the summit of the crag, struck very near them.
Ellen started from her knees, and, with her false
guide, gazed eagerly upward,— he in the
fear of interruption, she in the hope of deliverance.
“At length, he cries, behold the
fated spring!
Yon rugged cliff conceals the fountain
blest,
Dark rocks its crystal source o’ershadowing.”
Psyche.
The tale now returns to Fanshawe, who, as will be
recollected, after being overtaken by Edward Walcott,
was left with little apparent prospect of aiding in
the deliverance of Ellen Langton.
