"The sooner the better."

The men now appeared to forget the presence of Alice, who sat faint with
fatigue and exhaustion, for she had been too sick at heart to touch the
food brought to her at their previous halting-place, gazing abstractedly
upon the fire. Her father, before their departure, made her swallow
some morsels of sea-biscuit, though each seemed to choke her; and then,
wrapped in a thick boat-cloak, she was placed in a small well-built
cutter; and as the sea-winds whistled round her, the present cold and
the past fatigues lulled her miserable heart into the arms of the
charitable Sleep.



CHAPTER II.

"You are once more a free woman;
Here I discharge your bonds."
/The Custom of the Country/.

AND many were thy trials, poor child; many that, were this book to
germinate into volumes more numerous than monk ever composed upon the
lives of saint or martyr (though a hundred volumes contained the record
of two years only in the life of St. Anthony), it would be impossible to
describe! We may talk of the fidelity of books, but no man ever wrote
even his own biography without being compelled to omit at least
nine-tenths of the most important materials. What are three--what six
volumes? We live six volumes in a day! Thought, emotion, joy, sorrow,
hope, fear, how prolix would they be if they might each tell their