They rose--and continued to walk in silence--but not apart--up and down that small sylvan enclosure overlooked but by rocks. The child saw her father's distraction--no unusual sight to her; yet on each recurrence as mournful and full of fear as if seen for the first time--and pretended to be playing aloof with her face pale in tears.
"That child's mother is not dead. Where she is now I know not--perhaps in a foreign country hiding her guilt and her shame. All say that a lovelier child was never seen than that wretch--God bless her--how beautiful is the poor creature now in her happiness singing over her flowers! Just such another must her mother have been at her age. She is now an outcast--and an adulteress."
The Pastor turned away his face, for in the silence he heard groans, and the hollow voice again spoke.--
"Through many dismal days and nights have I striven to forgive her, but never for many hours together have I been enabled to repent my curse. For on my knees I implored God to curse her--her head--her eyes--her breast--her body--mind, heart, and soul--and that she might go down a loathsome leper to the grave."
"Remember what He said to the woman--'Go, and sin no more!'"
"The words have haunted me all up and down the hills--His words and mine; but mine have always sounded liker justice at last--for my nature was created human--and human are all the passions that pronounced that holy or unholy curse!"
"Yet you would not curse her now--were she lying here at your feet--or if you were standing by her deathbed?"
"Lying here at my feet! Even here--on this very spot--not blasted, but green through all the year--within the shelter of these two rocks--she did lie at my feet in her beauty--and as I thought her innocence--my own happy bride! Hither I brought her to be blest--and blest I was even up to the measure of my misery. This world is hell to me now--but then it was heaven!"
"These awful names are of the mysteries beyond the grave."
"Hear me and judge. She was an orphan; all her father's and mother's relations were dead, but a few who were very poor. I married her, and secured her life against this heartless and wicked world. That child was born--and while it grew like a flower--she left it--and its father--me who loved her beyond light and life, and would have given up both for her sake."