near to madness. Sometimes by a strong effort he would succeed in
tearing his mind away from the subject, but then its place was
instantly filled by a proud form with reproachful eyes, and he would
feel that there, too, death had put it out of his power to make
atonement. Of those whom he had wronged Maria Lee alone survived, and
she had left him in sorrow, more bitter than any anger. Truly, Philip
Caresfoot was in melancholy case. Somewhere he had read that the wages
of sin is death, but surely what he felt surpassed the bitterness of
death. His evil-doing had not prospered with him. The snare he had set
for his father had fallen back upon himself, and he was a crushed and
ruined man.

It affords a curious insight into his character to reflect that all
these piled-up calamities, all this wreck and sudden death, did not
bring him penitent on his knees before the Maker he had outraged. The
crimes he had committed, especially if unsuccessful, or the sorrows
that had fallen upon him, would have sufficed to reduce nine-tenths of
ordinary men to a condition of humble supplication. For, generally
speaking, irreligion, or rather forgetfulness of God, is a plant of no
deep growth in the human heart, since its roots are turned by the rock
of that innate knowledge of a higher Power that forms the foundation
of every soul, and on which we are glad enough to set our feet when
the storms of trouble and emergency threaten to destroy us. But with
Philip this was not so. He never thought of repentance. His was not
the nature to fall down and say, "Lord, I have sinned, take Thou my
burden from me." Indeed, he was not so much sorry for the past as
fearful for the future. It was not grief for wrong-doing that wrung
his heart and broke his spirit, but rather his natural sorrow at
losing the only creature he had ever deeply loved, chagrin at the
shame of his position and the failure of his hopes, and the icy