wronged you, you have redressed all with one vial of vitriol in the eyes, where man is most sensitive. With that fire-juice you purged away all the past wrongs, I expiated in that liquid flame all the evil I had done you. You don't know what I have suffered. You have had no such experience of pain as to imagine the tortures I have undergone. If the anguish were all, it would be enough atonement; but it is not all. There is the future before me, a future of night. I shall have to trust to someone to do everything for me, to be eyes, and hands, and feet to me. Whom can I trust? How do I know that I shall not be deserted, and left to die in my darkness, a prey to ravenous men? If you loved me, then I could lean on you and be at peace. But you do not love me, and you will leave me when it suits your pleasure."
"No, Elijah," said Mehalah sadly; "that I never will do. I have robbed you of your sight. I did it unwittingly, in self-defence, perhaps also in anger at knowing how cruelly, wickedly,cowardly you had behaved to me and to another whom I loved."
"Whom you love still!" with a cry of rage.
"One whom I loved," repeated Mehalah sadly;" and I must atone for my mad act as far as lies in my power. I will stay by you. I will never forsake you."
"Listen to me, Mehalah," said Elijah, with concentrated vehemence; "you know what was said—that the person you loved went out in a boat and was lost. The body was never found. Should the man turn up again?"
"That is impossible."
"I don't care for impossibilities. I live now in a dream-world where there is no line drawn between the possible and the impossible. Should he reappear, what then?"
"Still I would remain at my post of duty," said the girl, humouring his fancy.
"The post of duty, not of love," he muttered.
"I said duty," she replied; "I will never leave that."
His thumbs twitched on her cheek-bones and worked their way to the corners of her eyes; she sharply withdrew her head.
He laughed. "You thought I was going to gouge your eyes out with my thumbnails," he said, "that I was going
