father's letter and the inclosure, and conjecture what might be his
course of action if he ever escaped from this place. His father's voice
seemed now to sound to him more imploringly than ever; and the winds at
night, as they moaned round the rock, seemed to modulate themselves, to
form their sounds to something like a wild cry, and wail forth, "Come
home!" Yet that home was now surely farther removed than ever, and the
winds seemed only to mock him. More sad and more despairing than Ulysses
on the Ogygian shore, he too wasted away with home-sickness.

[Greek: kateibeto se glukus aion noston oduromeno.]

Fate thus far had been against him, and the melancholy recollections of
his past life could yield nothing but despondency. Driven from home when
but a boy, he had become an exile, had wandered to the other side of the
world, and was just beginning to attain some prospect of a fortune when
this letter came. Rising up from the prostration of that blow, he had
struggled against fate, but only to encounter a more over-mastering
force, and this last stroke had been the worst of all. Could he rally
after this? Could he now hope to escape?

Fate had been against him; but yet, perhaps, here, on this lonely
island, he might find a turning-point. Here he might find that turning
in the long lane which the proverb speaks of. "The day is darkest before
the morn," and perhaps he would yet have Fate on his side.

But the sternest and most courageous spirit can hardly maintain its
fortitude in an utter and unmitigated solitude. St. Simeon Stylites
could do so, but he felt that on the top of that pillar there rested the
eyes of the heavenly hosts and of admiring mankind. It is when the
consciousness of utter solitude comes that the soul sinks. When the