clouds hovering over my brow. "How can you accuse yourself," spoke the reverend veteran, "of having been, though involuntarily, accessary to the fatal blow that has thus cruelly destroyed the happiness of these people, whose fate you are bemoaning? It was the high decree of a superior power, that rules the fate of man. The ways of the all-wise are ever good and just, though surrounded sometimes with impenetrable darkness. Men are but tools in the hand of providence, and never ought to murmur against the father of the universe. It is not you who have destroyed the happiness of these poor sufferers; your heart is good, and you could not foresee the dreadful consequences of your juvenile rashness; cheer up, young man, and trust to the supreme ruler of all things, that he knows best what is good and fit, he produces light from the womb of darkness, and leads sometimes his children to greater bliss over the thorny path of misery and woe."
I
