the bribe which the smugglers offered in their terror, and
connived at, or rather encouraged, their intention of carrying
away the child of his benefactor who, if left behind, was old
enough to have described the scene of blood which he had
witnessed. The only palliative which the ingenuity of Glossin
could offer to his conscience was, that the temptation was great,
and came suddenly upon him, embracing as it were the very
advantages on which his mind had so long rested, and promising to
relieve him from distresses which must have otherwise speedily
overwhelmed him. Besides, he endeavoured to think that self-
preservation rendered his conduct necessary. He was, in some
degree, in the power of the robbers, and pleaded hard with his
conscience that, had he declined their offers, the assistance
which he could have called for, though not distant, might not have
arrived in time to save him from men who, on less provocation, had
just committed murder.

Galled with the anxious forebodings of a guilty conscience,
Glossin now arose and looked out upon the night. The scene which
we have already described in the third chapter of this story, was
now covered with snow, and the brilliant, though waste, whiteness
of the land gave to the sea by contrast a dark and livid tinge. A
landscape covered with snow, though abstractedly it may be called
beautiful, has, both from the association of cold and barrenness
and from its comparative infrequency, a wild, strange, and
desolate appearance. Objects well known to us in their common
state have either disappeared, or are so strangely varied and
disguised that we seem gazing on an unknown world. But it was not
with such reflections that the mind of this bad man was occupied.
His eye was upon the gigantic and gloomy outlines of the old