"Shadows, clouds, and darkness rested on it."
Their hearts involuntarily fluttered and shrank within them, when they gazed upon the threatening gloom which hung over it. Their straitened circumstances--an honorable poverty--had been a burden light, indeed, to bear. They were very happy in one another's company; their house, though small, was convenient, and even elegantly comfortable; they had health; Mr. Aubrey had constant exercise for an active and vigorous mind, in the acquisition of the learning of a noble profession, the practice of which might possibly hereafter raise all of them to even affluence and distinction--at all events, might secure them the substantial comforts of life. But he would have moments of heaviness and trepidation. When engaged in his little study, in the profound solitude and silence of the early morning, while he was thus straining his faculties to their utmost, on behalf of the sweet innocent beings--his wife--his children--his sister--sleeping above, he would sometimes lean back in his chair, with a very deep sigh, and sink into a revery--oh, how sad and painful!--deepening occasionally into agony; but he would suddenly arouse himself, and resume his studies with a powerful effort at abstraction--with additional intensity of application.--How, indeed, could he be otherwise than momentarily _paralyzed_, when he surveyed his truly alarming, his tremendous pecuniary liabilities? Bills of costs--Heaven only knew to what amount--due to Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap; to his own attorneys, Messrs. Runnington; and to Mr. Parkinson: and then--sickening and fearful object!--the Mesne Profits--what _was_ to become of them all? The mind which, in the presence of such disturbing forces as these, could apply its energies so successfully as did that of Mr. Aubrey to the acquisition of knowledge, with any degree of calmness, must surely have been of no common order, and have undergone no slight discipline; but, alas! alas! what could all this have availed him, unless he had been vouchsafed assistance from on high? When the _waters were come in unto his soul_; when he was _sinking in deep mire, where there was no standing_; when he was _come into deep waters, where the floods overflowed him_--whither was he to look but to one quarter, and that ABOVE, with earnest, and faithful, and constant supplication to the Almighty?