of a person groping in the dark. Long after his eyes had opened, there
was a film over them and he still felt for his way out into light. But
by slow degrees his sight cleared and his hands stopped. He saw the
ceiling, he saw the wall, he saw me. As his sight cleared, mine cleared
too, and when at last we looked in one another's faces, I started back,
and I cries passionately:

"O you wicked wicked man! Your sin has found you out!"

For I knew him, the moment life looked out of his eyes, to be Mr. Edson,
Jemmy's father who had so cruelly deserted Jemmy's young unmarried mother
who had died in my arms, poor tender creetur, and left Jemmy to me.

"You cruel wicked man! You bad black traitor!"

With the little strength he had, he made an attempt to turn over on his
wretched face to hide it. His arm dropped out of the bed and his head
with it, and there he lay before me crushed in body and in mind. Surely
the miserablest sight under the summer sun!

"O blessed Heaven," I says a crying, "teach me what to say to this broken
mortal! I am a poor sinful creetur, and the Judgment is not mine."

As I lifted my eyes up to the clear bright sky, I saw the high tower
where Jemmy had stood above the birds, seeing that very window; and the
last look of that poor pretty young mother when her soul brightened and
got free, seemed to shine down from it.

"O man, man, man!" I says, and I went on my knees beside the bed; "if
your heart is rent asunder and you are truly penitent for what you did,