It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by theghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, manyunavailing sorrows and regrets.

I went away from England; not knowing, even then, how great the shockwas, that I had to bear. I left all who were dear to me, and went away;and believed that I had borne it, and it was past. As a man upon afield of battle will receive a mortal hurt, and scarcely know that he isstruck, so I, when I was left alone with my undisciplined heart, had noconception of the wound with which it had to strive.

The knowledge came upon me, not quickly, but little by little, and grainby grain. The desolate feeling with which I went abroad, deepenedand widened hourly. At first it was a heavy sense of loss and sorrow,wherein I could distinguish little else. By imperceptible degrees,it became a hopeless consciousness of all that I had lost--love,friendship, interest; of all that had been shattered--my first trust,my first affection, the whole airy castle of my life; of all thatremained--a ruined blank and waste, lying wide around me, unbroken, tothe dark horizon.

If my grief were selfish, I did not know it to be so. I mourned for mychild-wife, taken from her blooming world, so young. I mourned for himwho might have won the love and admiration of thousands, as he had wonmine long ago. I mourned for the broken heart that had found rest in thestormy sea; and for the wandering remnants of the simple home, where Ihad heard the night-wind blowing, when I was a child.

From the accumulated sadness into which I fell, I had at length no hopeof ever issuing again. I roamed from place to place, carrying my burdenwith me everywhere. I felt its whole weight now; and I drooped beneathit, and I said in my heart that it could never be lightened.

When this despondency was at its worst, I believed that I should die.Sometimes, I thought that I would like to die at home; and actuallyturned back on my road, that I might get there soon. At other times, Ipassed on farther away,--from city to city, seeking I know not what, andtrying to leave I know not what behind.

It is not in my power to retrace, one by one, all the weary phases ofdistress of mind through which I passed. There are some dreams that canonly be imperfectly and vaguely described; and when I oblige myself tolook back on this time of my life, I seem to be recalling such a dream.I see myself passing on among the novelties of foreign towns, palaces,cathedrals, temples, pictures, castles, tombs, fantastic streets--theold abiding places of History and Fancy--as a dreamer might; bearing mypainful load through all, and hardly conscious of the objects as theyfade before me. Listlessness to everything, but brooding sorrow, was thenight that fell on my undisciplined heart. Let me look up from it--asat last I did, thank Heaven!--and from its long, sad, wretched dream, todawn.

For many months I travelled with this ever-darkening cloud upon mymind. Some blind reasons that I had for not returning home--reasons thenstruggling within me, vainly, for more distinct expression--kept meon my pilgrimage. Sometimes, I had proceeded restlessly from place toplace, stopping nowhere; sometimes, I had lingered long in one spot. Ihad had no purpose, no sustaining soul within me, anywhere.

I was in Switzerland. I had come out of Italy, over one of the greatpasses of the Alps, and had since wandered with a guide among theby-ways of the mountains. If those awful solitudes had spoken to myheart, I did not know it. I had found sublimity and wonder in the dreadheights and precipices, in the roaring torrents, and the wastes of iceand snow; but as yet, they had taught me nothing else.

I came, one evening before sunset, down into a valley, where I was torest. In the course of my descent to it, by the winding track alongthe mountain-side, from which I saw it shining far below, I think somelong-unwonted sense of beauty and tranquillity, some softening influenceawakened by its peace, moved faintly in my breast. I remember pausingonce, with a kind of sorrow that was not all oppressive, not quitedespairing. I remember almost hoping that some better change waspossible within me.

I came into the valley, as the evening sun was shining on the remoteheights of snow, that closed it in, like eternal clouds. The bases ofthe mountains forming the gorge in which the little village lay, wererichly green; and high above this gentler vegetation, grew forests ofdark fir, cleaving the wintry snow-drift, wedge-like, and stemming theavalanche. Above these, were range upon range of craggy steeps, greyrock, bright ice, and smooth verdure-specks of pasture, all graduallyblending with the crowning snow. Dotted here and there on themountain's-side, each tiny dot a home, were lonely wooden cottages, sodwarfed by the towering heights that they appeared too small for toys.So did even the clustered village in the valley, with its wooden bridgeacross the stream, where the stream tumbled over broken rocks, androared away among the trees. In the quiet air, there was a sound ofdistant singing--shepherd voices; but, as one bright evening cloudfloated midway along the mountain's-side, I could almost have believedit came from there, and was not earthly music. All at once, in thisserenity, great Nature spoke to me; and soothed me to lay down my wearyhead upon the grass, and weep as I had not wept yet, since Dora died!

I had found a packet of letters awaiting me but a few minutes before,and had strolled out of the village to read them while my supper wasmaking ready. Other packets had missed me, and I had received none for along time. Beyond a line or two, to say that I was well, and had arrivedat such a place, I had not had fortitude or constancy to write a lettersince I left home.

The packet was in my hand. I opened it, and read the writing of Agnes.

She was happy and useful, was prospering as she had hoped. That was allshe told me of herself. The rest referred to me.

She gave me no advice; she urged no duty on me; she only told me, in herown fervent manner, what her trust in me was. She knew (she said) howsuch a nature as mine would turn affliction to good. She knew how trialand emotion would exalt and strengthen it. She was sure that in my everypurpose I should gain a firmer and a higher tendency, through the griefI had undergone. She, who so gloried in my fame, and so looked forwardto its augmentation, well knew that I would labour on. She knew that inme, sorrow could not be weakness, but must be strength. As the enduranceof my childish days had done its part to make me what I was, so greatercalamities would nerve me on, to be yet better than I was; and so, asthey had taught me, would I teach others. She commended me to God, whohad taken my innocent darling to His rest; and in her sisterly affectioncherished me always, and was always at my side go where I would; proudof what I had done, but infinitely prouder yet of what I was reserved todo.

I put the letter in my breast, and thought what had I been an hour ago!When I heard the voices die away, and saw the quiet evening cloud growdim, and all the colours in the valley fade, and the golden snow uponthe mountain-tops become a remote part of the pale night sky, yet feltthat the night was passing from my mind, and all its shadows clearing,there was no name for the love I bore her, dearer to me, henceforward,than ever until then.

I read her letter many times. I wrote to her before I slept. I told herthat I had been in sore need of her help; that without her I was not,and I never had been, what she thought me; but that she inspired me tobe that, and I would try.

I did try. In three months more, a year would have passed since thebeginning of my sorrow. I determined to make no resolutions until theexpiration of those three months, but to try. I lived in that valley,and its neighbourhood, all the time.

The three months gone, I resolved to remain away from home for sometime longer; to settle myself for the present in Switzerland, which wasgrowing dear to me in the remembrance of that evening; to resume my pen;to work.

I resorted humbly whither Agnes had commended me; I sought out Nature,never sought in vain; and I admitted to my breast the human interestI had lately shrunk from. It was not long, before I had almost as manyfriends in the valley as in Yarmouth: and when I left it, before thewinter set in, for Geneva, and came back in the spring, their cordialgreetings had a homely sound to me, although they were not conveyed inEnglish words.

I worked early and late, patiently and hard. I wrote a Story, with apurpose growing, not remotely, out of my experience, and sent it toTraddles, and he arranged for its publication very advantageously forme; and the tidings of my growing reputation began to reach me fromtravellers whom I encountered by chance. After some rest and change, Ifell to work, in my old ardent way, on a new fancy, which took strongpossession of me. As I advanced in the execution of this task, I felt itmore and more, and roused my utmost energies to do it well. This was mythird work of fiction. It was not half written, when, in an interval ofrest, I thought of returning home.

For a long time, though studying and working patiently, I had accustomedmyself to robust exercise. My health, severely impaired when I leftEngland, was quite restored. I had seen much. I had been in manycountries, and I hope I had improved my store of knowledge.

I have now recalled all that I think it needful to recall here, of thisterm of absence--with one reservation. I have made it, thus far, withno purpose of suppressing any of my thoughts; for, as I have elsewheresaid, this narrative is my written memory. I have desired to keep themost secret current of my mind apart, and to the last. I enter on itnow. I cannot so completely penetrate the mystery of my own heart, asto know when I began to think that I might have set its earliest andbrightest hopes on Agnes. I cannot say at what stage of my griefit first became associated with the reflection, that, in my waywardboyhood, I had thrown away the treasure of her love. I believe I mayhave heard some whisper of that distant thought, in the old unhappy lossor want of something never to be realized, of which I had been sensible.But the thought came into my mind as a new reproach and new regret, whenI was left so sad and lonely in the world.

If, at that time, I had been much with her, I should, in the weakness ofmy desolation, have betrayed this. It was what I remotely dreaded when Iwas first impelled to stay away from England. I could not have borneto lose the smallest portion of her sisterly affection; yet, in thatbetrayal, I should have set a constraint between us hitherto unknown.

I could not forget that the feeling with which she now regarded me hadgrown up in my own free choice and course. That if she had ever loved mewith another love--and I sometimes thought the time was when she mighthave done so--I had cast it away. It was nothing, now, that I hadaccustomed myself to think of her, when we were both mere children,as one who was far removed from my wild fancies. I had bestowed mypassionate tenderness upon another object; and what I might have done,I had not done; and what Agnes was to me, I and her own noble heart hadmade her.

In the beginning of the change that gradually worked in me, when Itried to get a better understanding of myself and be a better man, Idid glance, through some indefinite probation, to a period when I mightpossibly hope to cancel the mistaken past, and to be so blessed asto marry her. But, as time wore on, this shadowy prospect faded, anddeparted from me. If she had ever loved me, then, I should hold herthe more sacred; remembering the confidences I had reposed in her, herknowledge of my errant heart, the sacrifice she must have made to be myfriend and sister, and the victory she had won. If she had never lovedme, could I believe that she would love me now?

I had always felt my weakness, in comparison with her constancy andfortitude; and now I felt it more and more. Whatever I might have beento her, or she to me, if I had been more worthy of her long ago, I wasnot now, and she was not. The time was past. I had let it go by, and haddeservedly lost her.

That I suffered much in these contentions, that they filled me withunhappiness and remorse, and yet that I had a sustaining sense that itwas required of me, in right and honour, to keep away from myself, withshame, the thought of turning to the dear girl in the withering of myhopes, from whom I had frivolously turned when they were bright andfresh--which consideration was at the root of every thought I hadconcerning her--is all equally true. I made no effort to conceal frommyself, now, that I loved her, that I was devoted to her; but I broughtthe assurance home to myself, that it was now too late, and that ourlong-subsisting relation must be undisturbed.

I had thought, much and often, of my Dora's shadowing out to me whatmight have happened, in those years that were destined not to try us;I had considered how the things that never happen, are often as muchrealities to us, in their effects, as those that are accomplished. Thevery years she spoke of, were realities now, for my correction; andwould have been, one day, a little later perhaps, though we had partedin our earliest folly. I endeavoured to convert what might have beenbetween myself and Agnes, into a means of making me more self-denying,more resolved, more conscious of myself, and my defects and errors.Thus, through the reflection that it might have been, I arrived at theconviction that it could never be.

These, with their perplexities and inconsistencies, were the shiftingquicksands of my mind, from the time of my departure to the time of myreturn home, three years afterwards. Three years had elapsed since thesailing of the emigrant ship; when, at that same hour of sunset, and inthe same place, I stood on the deck of the packet vessel that brought mehome, looking on the rosy water where I had seen the image of that shipreflected.

Three years. Long in the aggregate, though short as they went by. Andhome was very dear to me, and Agnes too--but she was not mine--she wasnever to be mine. She might have been, but that was past!