now waxing weaker and fainter, as the canker of disease fastened upon
the core of her young but blighted life,--there was yet a high,
though, alas! not constant consolation within him, whenever, from the
troubles of this dim spot his thoughts could escape, like birds
released from their cage, and lose themselves in the lustre and
freedom of their native heaven.

"If," thought he, as he looked upon his secret and treasured work, "if
the wind scatter or the rock receive these seeds, they were at least
dispersed by a hand which asked no selfish return, and a heart which
would have lavished the harvest of its labours upon those who know not
the husbandman and trample his hopes into the dust."

But by degrees this comfort of a noble and generous nature, these
whispers of a vanity rather to be termed holy than excusable, began to
grow unfrequent and low. The cravings of a more engrossing and heavy
want than those of the mind came eagerly and rapidly upon him; the
fair cheek of his infant became pinched and hollow; his wife conquered
nature itself by love, and starved herself in silence, and set bread
before him with a smile and bade him eat.

"But you,--you?" he would ask inquiringly, and then pause.

"I have dined, dearest: I want nothing; eat, love, eat." But he ate
not. The food robbed from her seemed to him more deadly than poison;
and he would rise, and dash his hand to his brow, and go forth alone,
with nature unsatisfied, to look upon this luxurious world and learn
content.

It was after such a scene that, one day, he wandered forth into the