faded away. This being, so exceptional that fancy might well invest him
with preternatural attributes, was now reduced by human suffering to human
sympathy and comprehension; yet his utter want of conscience was still as
apparent as in his day of joyous animal spirits. With what hideous
candour he had related his perfidy and ingratitude to the man to whom, in
his belief, he owed an inestimable obligation, and with what insensibility
to the signal retribution which in most natures would have awakened
remorse!

And by what dark hints and confessions did he seem to confirm the
incredible memoir of Sir Philip Derval! He owned that he had borne from
the corpse of Haroun the medicament to which he ascribed his recovery from
a state yet more hopeless than that under which he now laboured! He had
alluded, rapidly, obscurely, to some knowledge at his command "surer than
man's." And now, even now the mere wreck of his former existence--by what
strange charm did he still control and confuse my reason? And how was it
that I felt myself murmuring, again and again, "But what, after all, if
his hope be no chimera, and if Nature do hide a secret by which I could
save the life of my beloved Lilian?"

And again and again, as that thought would force itself on me, I rose and
crept to Lilian's threshold, listening to catch the faintest sound of her
breathing. All still, all dark! In that sufferer recognized science
detects no mortal disease, yet dares not bid me rely on its amplest
resources of skill to turn aside from her slumber the stealthy advance of
death; while in yon log-hut one whose malady recognized science could not
doubt to be mortal has composed himself to sleep, confident of life!
Recognized science?--recognized ignorance! The science of to-day is the
ignorance of to-morrow! Every year some bold guess lights up a truth to
which, but the year before, the schoolmen of science were as blinded as