To travel half a mile alone.-Good lady!

Forgive me!
It would have come to this!-

Idon.

What brings you hither? speak!
Beg. (pointing to MARMADUKE). This innocent gen-
tleman. Sweet heavens! I told him
Such tales of your dead father! - God is my judge,
I thought there was no harm: but that bad man,
He bribed me with his gold, and looked so fierce.
Mercy! I said I know not what-O, pity me-
I said, sweet lady, you were not his daughter-
Pity me, I am haunted; thrice this day
My conscience made me wish to be struck blind;
And then I would have prayed, and had no voice.
Idon. (to MARMADUKE.) Was it my father?-no,
no, no, for he

Was meek, and patient, feeble, old and blind,
Helpless, and loved me dearer than his life.
For one question, I have a heart
That will sustain me. Did you murder him?

But hear me.

Saints forgive me. Had I thought

Mar. No, not by stroke of arm. But learn the To feed remorse, to welcome every sting

process:

Of penitential anguish, yea with tears.

Proof after proof was pressed upon me; guilt

When seas and continents shall lie between us-
The wider space the better- we may find

Made evident, as seemed, by blacker guilt,
Whose impious folds enwrapped even thee; and truth In such a course fit links of sympathy,
And innocence, embodied in his looks,
An incommunicable rivalship
His words and tones and gestures, did but serve
Maintained, for peaceful ends beyond our view.
With me to aggravate his crimes, and heaped
Ruin upon the cause for which they pleaded.
Then pity crossed the path of my resolve:
Confounded, I looked up to Heaven, and cast,
Idonea! thy blind father, on the ordeal
Of the bleak waste- left him and so he died!-
[IDONEA sinks senseless; Beggar, ELEANOR, &c.,
crowd round, and bear her off.
Why may we speak these things, and do no more;
Why should a thrust of the arm have such a power,
And words that tell these things be heard in vain?
She is not dead. Why!-if I loved this woman,
I would take care she never woke again

[Confused voices-several of the band enter-
rush upon OSWALD and seize him..
One of them. I would have dogged him to the jaws
of hell!
Osw. Ha! is it so!-That vagrant hag!-this comes
Of having left a thing like her alive!
Several voices. Despatch him!
Osw.
If I pass beneath a rock
And shout, and, with the echo of my voice,
Bring down a heap of rubbish, and it crush me,
I die without dishonour. Famished, starved,

[Aside.

A fool and coward blended to my wish!

But she WILL wake, and she will weep for me,
And say, no blame was mine—and so, poor fool,
Will waste her curses on another name.

Enter OSWALD.

OSWALD. (to himself.) Strong to o'erturn, strong
also to build up.
[TO MARMADUke.
The starts and sallies of our last encounter
Were natural enough; but that, I trust,
Is all gone by. You have cast off the chains
That fettered your nobility of mind —
Delivered heart and head!

Your pupil is, you see, an apt proficient. (ironically.)
Start not! Here is another face hard by;
Come, let us take a peep at both together,
And, with a voice at which the dead will quake,
Resound the praise of your morality —
Of this too much.

This is a paltry field for enterprise.
Mar. Ay, what shall we encounter next?
issue-

[Drawing OSWALD towards the cottage — stops short at the door.

Men are there, millions, Oswald,

Who with bare hands would have plucked out thy heart
And flung it to the dogs: but I am raised
Above, or sunk below, all further sense
Of provocation. Leave me, with the weight
Of that old man's forgiveness on thy heart,
Pressing as heavily as it doth on mine.
Coward I have been; know, there lies not now
Within the compass of a mortal thought

A deed that I would shrink from;- but to endure,
That is my destiny. May it be thine:
Thy office, thy ambition, be henceforth

'Twas nothing more than darkness deepening darkness, And weakness crowned with the impotence of death!

Another of the band. The ruthless traitor!
Mar.
[He walks about distractedly. With that reproof I do resign a station
Of which I have been proud.

[Smiles scornfully and exultingly at MARMADUKE Wal. "T is done! (stabs him.)

Let us to Palestine; That may record my story: nor let words

A rash deed!

Wil. (approaching MARMADUKE.) O, my poor

master!

Mar. Discerning monitor, my faithful Wilfred,
Why art thou here?
[Turning to WALLACE.
Wallace, upon these Borders,
Many there be whose eyes will not want cause
To weep that I am gone. Brothers in arms!
Raise on that dreary waste a monument

I

Few must they be, and delicate in their touch
This As light itself-be there withheld from her
Who, through most wicked arts, was made an orphan
By one who would have died a thousand times,
To shield her from a moment's harm. To you,

NOTES

ΤΟ

POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH.