having first looked upon and blessed her treasures. Her sleep was of
that restless heavy kind which yields no refreshment. Once she was
awakened by hearing her husband shut the cottage-door; again she slept,
but started from a horrid dream--or was it indeed reality! and had her
husband and her son Abel quitted the dwelling together? She sprang from
her bed, and felt on the pallet--Gerald was there; again she felt--she
called--she passed into the next room--"Abel, Abel, my child! as you
value your mother's blessing speak!" There was no reply. A dizzy
sickness almost overpowered her senses. Was her husband's horrid
threat indeed fulfilled? and had he so soon taken their child as his
participator in unequivocal sin? She opened the door, and looked out
upon the night; it was cold and misty, and her sight could not penetrate
the gloom. The chill fog rested upon her face like the damps of the
grave. She attempted to call again upon her son, but her powers of
utterance were palsied--her tongue quivered--her lips separated yet
there came forth no voice, no sound to break the silence of oppressed
nature. Her eyes moved mechanically towards the heavens--they were dark
as the earth; had God deserted her?--would he deny one ray, one little
ray of light, to lead her to her child? Why did the moon cease to shine,
and the stars withhold their brightness? Should she never again behold
her boy, her first-born? Her heart swelled, and beat within her bosom.
She shivered with intense agony, and leaned her throbbing brow against
the door-post, to which she had clung for support. Her husband's words
rang in her ears--"One by one shall your children be taken from you to
serve my purposes!" Through the dense fog she fancied that he glared
upon her in bitter hatred--his deep-set eyes flashing with demoniac
fire, and his smile, now extending, now contracting, into all the varied
expressions of triumphant malignity! She pressed her hand on her eyes to
shut out the horrid vision, and, a prayer, a simple prayer, rose to her
lips. Like oil upon the troubled waters, it soothed and composed her