Hope is no constant prophet of the truth.
Who once has breathed of prison air, henceforth
Loathed of his fellows, walks a tainted man;
To him all paths of good are ever closed,
All ways to crime unbarr'd and open wide.
Dogg'd with a felon's name, he sought for work,
And sought it vainly; month on month went by,
Lowering their slender stock of means and hope,
Till front to front with utter want they stood;
Then Mary wrote; she told of faults atoned
In hunger, disappointment and despair,

A future-fear; a present-misery.

Came there no answer? Yes; "Come back," it said, "Leave you your husband, daughter, and return!

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My home is yours, but it is none for him,

"And all shall be forgotten; else henceforth

"Know not your father, girl!" Tears drown'd the note, And nevermore from her the old man heard.

But let me hasten; for a time again

All trace of them we lost, save that there came,

I know not how, a rumour to our ears,
That Edward, urged of want, to evil ways
Had turn'd, a drunkard and a ruin'd man,
Familiar with all modes of crime and sin;
And often, round our evening cottage fire,
Our thoughts would be of Mary, and our talk
Shape darkest fancies of her state of life,
Her sufferings and her sorrows. Well we knew,
Bred in the strictness of a pious youth,
Much had she changed, if guilt and vice to her
Had grown familiar, and conjecture closed,
Almost with hope's half prayer, that, ere this,
Within the quiet of the grave she lay,
Where grief is not and weariness hath rest;
Alas! alas! how otherwise it was!

O Power Supreme! thy ways are hard to man,
And faith alone has strength to read them right,
Good out of suffering brought-from evil, good.
Business to London call'd me, when, it chanced,
Running my eye across the morning's Times,

What should it light on but poor Mary's name,
Prologue to such a bitter tale of wrong

As memory yet companions with quick tears.
It seems that Edward, bitter with despair,
Turn'd on the cold hard world that on him trod,
And headlong threw him down the depths of crime,
Till he had fathom'd, ere yet well a man,

The last abysses of all guilt and sin;
Herding with vilest lives and shameless ill,
His being shaped itself on all around,
Till he, in will and inward impulse, moved
A thing his sinless soul had shudder'd from.

Oaths, desperate as his days, were words with him,
And, hour on hour, the hellish fire of drink
Raged in his brain and burnt along his blood,
Fled of remorse, of meekness and of good,
Till love, their fellow, desolate and lone,

Last lingerer, with slow steps and turn'd eyes, pass'd,
Leaving to savage thoughts and brutal deeds

The unholy life that it no longer stirred

To acts and words that had some touch of heaven.
And Mary, how bore she the spites of fate?
Lower'd she to his level, day by day,

Soiling the spotless whiteness of her soul,

Dragg'd down by love's own strength from purity?
Or kept she still her sinlessness of youth,

Girt in from ill with childhood's Sabbath ways,
Its infant piety and holy prayers?

The closing horror of her hapless fate

No utterance gave distinctly, yet led on

The following thought, by glimpse and broken hint, To all but surety that her latter life

Held swerveless on its early blameless way,

Till murder with strange horror strode her path,
And, even for her pureness, smote her down.
"Twas known the law's grasp, closing upon him,
Had never laid its wrathful hand on her,
And, in the night of blood to which I tend,
The dwellers in the house, before her shriek,
Caught threats and curses and disjointed words,

As of one urging to some deed of sin

Another vainly, while prayers, pray'd in vain
By Mary, gave refusal to his will;

Then came fierce bursts of wrath, and then a shriek,
And heavy feet that fled along the stairs;

And, as they rush'd towards the sight of death,

A parting glance of him proclaim'd them his;
Upon the bare room's bloody floor she lay,

A sight that to the flying murderer's eyes

Should have been madness; he had struck her down,
And they who found her in her senseless form
Saw little life; even while I shuddering read,
Within a hospital she dying lay,
Within a prison, he. No time I lost,
Urged by strong interest in her hapless fate;
In haste I went, and, as a well-known friend,
Urged my request to see her. I had come
Most opportunely, for, the by-gone night,
After a weary strife of sense with death,
Life for a moment won; that morning, Sir,
I found was order'd for the solemn act
Of her accusal of her murderer;

For, though life with a fitful brightness shone,
It was a farewell flicker ere it sank,
We saw. O Sir, O Sir, it was a thing
To flood the eyes with sorrow for a life,
To stand, as I did, by her dying bed,
Looking upon the wreck that lay below.

Poor thing! poor thing! through what a thorny track
Of agony and sickness of the heart

Must she have wander'd ere she sank to this;

So changed from her old times of joy and smiles,

That memory hardly on her face could find
One feature of its knowing; worn and thin,
With an unnatural lustre of the eyes,

Through which, with ghostly fire, the parting soul
Peer'd through its mortal dwelling on the world,
She lay, with pinch'd sharp features, whiter than
The ghastly bandages around them bound,
And lips that, moving, utter'd not a sound,

As though the spirit communed with itself;

Her eyes met mine, and once the old sweet smile
A moment trembled on her hollow cheek,

And a weak shadow of her happy self

Stole back a fleeting moment and was gone;

She named my name, and would have spoken; alas! A coming tread had fix'd her eager eye

And struck all else into one utter blank,

In which the world, all circumstance and time,
Were blotted out and nothing.

O'er her face
The ghastly memory of that fearful night
Shudder'd, and in her sight her murderer stood.
No, not the Edward of her girlish love,—
No, not the husband of her woman's faith,-
He stood before her, one whose sullen front
Was reckless sin; half master of its dread,
To hers his fearful eye stole struggling up,
But, daring not the accusal of her look,
Fell from the depth of love within her gaze,

That love that trembled through her faltering words,
Edward, my Edward-I accuse you? I?

"O gentlemen, he could not-'twas not he— "A dream-a shuddering dream-it's all forgot. "O husband, kiss me-kiss me once again, "Your own fond wife-and, Edward, when I'm gone, "Husband—my husband, think of me but as "That Mary, she that smiled your heart away "In the old years-that loved you to the last, "O Edward, Edward, how, no words can say.”

Upon her pillow back she sank, her eyes
Shut in exhaustion; but about her lips
Wander'd the blessedness of such a smile
As gladden'd with its joy the songs of heaven,
A smile that told of injuries forgiven,
And all of earth but peace and love forgot;
A moment more, that glory on her lips,
Without a sound, she pass'd to find that rest
The weary find within the quiet grave.

Now there's a tale that by our Mitford told,
Our Wordsworth, or in the haunting music sung
Of him who wrote of Dora, should have power
And reign eternal o'er the hearts of men,
Wedded unto the sweetest tears of time.
Go, study them, and see how life is life,
Despite of clothings, customs, forms and creeds,
To eyes that see, as theirs, our nature bare.
Trust me, the heart still throbs and breaks the same,
Laughs with the laugh and lives the very life
Of all the ages. Go-go-study them!

66

THE BOAT-RACE.

THERE, win the cup, and you shall have my girl. "I won it, Ned; and you shall win it too,

"Or wait a twelvemonth. Books-for ever books! 'Nothing but talk of poets and their rhymes!

"I'd have you, boy, a man, with thews and strength "To breast the world with, and to cleave your way,

"No maudlin dreamer, that will need her care,

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She needing yours. There-there-I love you, Ned, "Both for your own, and for your mother's sake; "So win our boat-race, and the cup, next month, "And you shall have her." With a broad, loud laugh, A jolly triumph at his rare conceit,

He left the subject; and, across the wine,

We talked, or rather, all the talk was his,―
Of the best oarsmen that his youth had known,
Both of his set, and others-Clare, the boast
Of Jesus', and young Edmonds, he who fell,
Cleaving the ranks at Lucknow; and, to-day,

There was young Chester might be named with them;
Why, boy, I'm told his room is lit with cups

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"Won by his sculls. Ned, if he rows, he wins;

"Small chance for you, boy!" And again his laugh,
With its broad thunder, turn'd my thoughts to gall;
But yet I mask'd my humour with a mirth
Moulded on his; and, feigning haste, I went,