Darkness

With such wrong and woe exhausted, what I suffered and occasioned--
As a wild horse through a city, runs, with lightning in his eyes,
And then dashing at a church's cold and passive wall impassioned,
Strikes the death into his burning brain, and blindly drops and dies--
So I fell struck down before her! Do you blame me, friends, for weakness?
'Twas my strength of passion slew me! fell before her like a stone;
Fast the dreadful world rolled from me, on its roaring wheels of blackness!
When the light came, I was lying in this chamber--and alone.

--E.B. Browning.

Hannah Worth was sitting over her great wood fire and busily engaged in
needlework when the door was gently pushed open and the gray-haired man
entered, bearing the boy in his arms.

Hannah looked calmly up, then threw down her work and started from her
chair, exclaiming: "Reuben Gray! you back again! you! and--who have you got there--Ishmael?
Good Heavens! what has happened to the poor boy?"

"Nothing to frighten you, Hannah, my dear; he has fainted, I think, that
is all," answered Reuben gently, as he laid the boy carefully upon the
bed.

"But, oh, my goodness, Reuben, how did it happen? where did you find
him?" cried Hannah, frantically seizing first one hand and then the
other of the fainting boy, and clapping and rubbing them vigorously.

"I picked him up on the Baymouth wharf about half an hour ago, Hannah,
my dear, and--"

"The Baymouth wharf! that is out of all reason! Why it is not more than
two hours since he started to go to Brudenell Hall," exclaimed Hannah,
as she violently rubbed away at the boy's hands.