whom upon earth can I desire in comparison of Thee?' Teach me to feel and say this: I will be quiet; I will give up Raymond without complaint, I will appease Him by the present which goeth before me, and afterward I will meet Him face to face; peradventure He will accept of me.'

'August 20. He is gone, and I am alone; quite solitary. My child is gone. I feel as if I had no one, nothing left to love; and he, too, has no one to love him, nothing to love. Oh, that parting hour!-oh Raymond, my child, my one dear point in life, my only comfort: shall I ever forget your eye, your look, when you left me at that sweet spot by the lake where we had so often been and talked, and read, and knelt together; I knew what you were feeling. Oh, I never yet felt desolateness before: I watched you round those trees; I strained my eyes till I saw your form no longer; I remained I know not how long, and then I went home alone to the empty room. The heaps of stones which you had heaped in the valley in mimicry of Sebastopol, looked like the 'stones of emptiness;' how emphatic that expression is, 'the stones of emptiness!' Suppose you are wounded, oh Raymond, what would I, would I give to be by your side: but you will be alone-alone, without a parent's hand or a parent's voice, on the dreadful, desolate battlefield; and I shall be here solitary and useless to you. Oh God, protect my child, not for my sake, for JESU'S sake that is the right prayer. I will write no more now, for I cannot control my words, and my written words will be judged hereafter.'

'September 21, 1854. Returned again from Killarney, nothing from my precious boy; where is he? The most dreadful hauntings fill my mind: I imagine him in the battle, fighting, acting nobly as I know he would, and ever will; or perhaps wounded, dying, no one near him, lying amid heaps of the slain; no one to seek him out; one among hundreds, and yet what a one to me! I fancy him dying; the cold, dull, night; the restless head; the eye fixed wandering on the stars; his hand, which I used to hold in mine, resting on the corpse of another: oh, I cannot bear the image which with such terrible minuteness comes up before my eye. I would go there, but I know not how; I would go and seek him among the dead and dying. People sometimes speak as if they thought it noble and heroic to be able to say they would die for those they love; it is only natural, selfish, nothing more. But how wrong to complain thus: I called GOD long since to do anything to me, to give me any chastisement rather than let my son be lost for my great sin; and if He has thought it needful to bring my sin to remembrance more vividly by slaying my son, what a mockery my prayer was! I know how closely dust and earth have clung to the roots of my affections; and He is shaking those off to make those roots to strike in heaven. His will be done, and may I have grace to thank Him earnestly and sincerely for it. I remember hearing some one say that when we thought we needed a wing to seek the sky, and imagined when that fell wounded our life was void, for our energy and life were gone too, the broken wing but beat us back to our nest

which we should never else have sought; and that there only was the refuge for some coming peril. May I seek refuge in His resting-place-His church, and then the broken wing will be a source of gratitude. I have been feeling since Raymond went, that all the energy and life were gone from religion itself; but if the broken wing may take refuge in the nest-God's will be done,"

And here came a pause in the diary; a few scattered leaves which were hard to decipher and appeared unfinished. The heart aches sometimes to go on narrating its griefs; it finds repose in utter silence.

On examining further, Mr. Randall discovered a paper which seemed to have been written quite recently. There was no date: it spoke of having been at Killarney again, and having returned with no intelligence; the words had come to have a dull, desolate ring in them; she seemed to have lost the power to give life to them, except the life of their own sorrowful weight.

And then there was a paper written yesterday, which spoke of a note received the day before, which seemed to say that the writer had gained intelligence which he was about to inquire into, and speedily send, perhaps to-morrow; and it was clear that it was of such a nature that Constance drew from it that her child was gone from her for ever in this world.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

MR. RANDALL AND CONSTANCE.

HAVING spent some time by himself in wandering about amid the hovels on the hill-side, Mr. Randall repaired to Killarney by the usual road, impelled by the anxiety of seeking an interview and pouring some consolation into the wounded spirit.

Throughout the day the clouds had been gathering in the direction of the coast round Dingle Bay; the sultry heat had been long threatening a storm, and that inward flight of birds from the sea became one of the seldom fallible signs of the coming event. The scene became very sublime: the outlines of the hills became mingled with the rising darkness, and seemed like vast beings awaiting in stillness and awe the avenging outbreak of heaven upon some wrong done by the human race; occasional gleams of lightning glanced over the scene, and lit up the still clear mirror of the lake, and the heavy masses of foliage which seemed bending down towards it for refuge; the occasional roll of heavy thunder, showed that one of those outbreaks was impending which so peculiarly belong to mountain districts.

Mr. Randall had reached Killarney and the postoffice without gaining any sight or information of the object of his search. The increasing violence of the storm which by successive peals over the distant lake and hills, was clearly advancing rapidly, made him

begin to think of how he should return to the Pass, and yet gain the end of his day's journey; he pursued his way to the head of the lake, and finding a slight lull in the storm and a break amid the clouds, and being very anxious lest he might lose altogether sight and hold of Constance, he determined on taking a boat, which waited on the edge of the lake, and in the pause of the weather to strive to gain Dunloe by a nearer and quicker route. After some little demur on the part of the boatmen from the threatening aspect of the evening, Mr. Randall set off: the distance seemed to increase as he advanced; and the dark clouds which gathered again with increasing power showed that the storm had by no means abated, but simply retired as if to gather strength for a more tremendous outbreak.

Few places are more dangerous under the influence of the storm than the lake: the narrow compass surrounded by the hills that in their ravines and gullies treasure up the wind, which bursting down on the sheet of water soon lashes it to foam within its narrow compass, offers great danger to the luckless boat. More than once the boatmen who conveyed Mr. Randall paused and hesitated as if inclined to return: Mr. Randall was on the point of yielding to their urgent request and advice, when he descried in the distance another vessel heaving with difficulty on the waters; the instinct of affording help to those in trouble urged him to intreat them to proceed, which after promise of a higher pay, they did. The darkness of the storm hung in deeper and deeper folds between him and the