which has given me comfort for months. Oh ! what an altered being have I felt these last few hours. May He whose laws I have so grievously offended accept my sincere penitence! Jealousy and unrequited love-unbridled in youth, and unsubdued by religion, have brought me to this. Oh! that at least my memory may be in part redeemed from dishonour in the eyes of her, whom I have loved more than life itself; and that I might dare to hope that she, whom I no longer grudge you, may yet when she hears of my untimely end, bestow a thought of pity on her earliest friend. B. P.” Harold was sensibly affected, and was instant in his enquiries from the bearer of the letter, with the view of learning more particularly the fate of Brownlow. The man had no difficulty in recalling his person; he had however been remarkably taciturn ever since he had joined the ship, which was bound with emigrants to Algoa Bay, and avoided the company of all his fellowpassengers. When the vessel struck, he seemed to make no efforts to escape, but approaching the bearer, and expressing a conviction that he himself should be lost, asked him if he was not a Scotchman. On his replying in the affirmative, and that he was a native of Morayshire, he took the letter from his breast, and begged him, if he should be one of the survivors, to see it to its proper destination. With respect to his fate no doubt existed; for though his body had not been recovered, before the sailor had left the country, it was known that every survivor was forthcoming-twenty only out of two hundred souls. Thus miserably perished the Attorney's son. Deprived of a mother's care during the first years of childhood; awed by a father who had never possessed his confidence; repelled by the only creature whom he cherished with an almost insane idolatry; bound to a hateful profession, and called on, by his situation in the family, to be the constant witness of his rival's success; escaping from the penalty of deeds for which his life was justly forfeited to the laws of his country, he was arrested in the prime of life, in a strange land, by a violent death. His last moments, however, were those of penitence, and his last prayer for her, who did not withhold the tear of pity from the memory of him she could not love! C. Whittingham, Tooks Court, Chancery Lane. |