and I failed to hear you rightly. Then my ears played me such a trick! Oh, sirs! if you but knew what a damnable trick my ears played me, you would pity me greatly, very, very greatly. This story touches me. It is much like one I seemed to have heard for many years, and that I have been repeating over and over to myself until I love it better than my life. If you would but go over it again—carefully—very carefully."
"My God, sirs!" he exclaimed, springing up with the energy of youth when he had heard the recital a second time, "tell me who started this story! Tell me how and where it began!"
"We cannot. We have heard many tell it, and not all alike."
"And do they—do you—believe—it is—true?" he asked, helplessly.
"We all know it is true; do not you believe it?"
"I can never forget it!" he said, in tones quickly grown harsh and husky. "Let us go away from so pitiful a place."
It was near nightfall when he returned, unobserved, and sat down beside the monument as one who had ended a pilgrimage.
"They all tell me the same story," he murmured, wearily. "Ah, it was the hidden epitaph that wrought the error! But for it, the sun of her memory would have had its brief, befitting day and tender setting. Presumptuous folly, to suppose they would understand my masterpiece, when they so often misconceive the hidden heart of His beautiful works, and convert the uncomprehended good and true into a curse of evil!"
The night fell. He was awaiting it. Nearer and nearer rolled the dark, suffering heart of a storm;
