the past and the present unite to form a future.

But as all reveries, like life itself, must end, Gilbert at length
seemed to be aware of the reality of the unpretending bed in the corner.
Having repeated the prayers which his piety suggested, he extinguished
the almost exhausted taper, and threw himself upon the bed. He could not
sleep, however; for, great as the fatigue of the day had been, the
excitement was greater. His mind was perpetually recurring to the events
at the spring, from which they wandered to his father's lonely and
anxious chamber: now he remembered the earnest appeal of Father Omehr,
and now pondered the injuries he had received from the house of Stramen.
Through a narrow opening in the wall he could see the noble church
sleeping in the moonlight. Its walls of variegated marble had been
built principally at the expense of the Barons of Stramen, for in those
days it was not unfrequent for private families to erect magnificent
churches from their own resources; and as his eye rested upon the misty
window, perhaps he felt that though utterly opposed in all else, there
was one thing in common between his own haughty race and the founders of
that church--religion.

The night wore on, and was far advanced; but Gilbert still kept piling
thought upon thought, unable and even scarcely desiring to exchange them
for the deep repose or more confused images of slumber. It must have
been after midnight when, as he lay awake, he could distinctly hear the
sound of blows. Gilbert was not a moment in conjecturing the cause; he
knew at once that the venerable priest was subjecting himself to
corporal chastisement. He did not live in an age when voluntary
mortification was ridiculed, when a sacred ambition to imitate a
crucified God insured contempt from man. Then, those self-denying
religious were not taunted with "the hope of gaining heaven by making