They
seek his life, and he will lose it. It must not be by our means; nay, if
we could win him back to penitence, we should be bound to love him yet.
Do not seem to know him, except as one who fled with you from the jail,
and if they question you about him, do not answer them. God be with you
through the night, dear boy! God be with you!'
She tore herself away, and in a few seconds Barnaby was alone. He stood
for a long time rooted to the spot, with his face hidden in his hands;
then flung himself, sobbing, on his miserable bed.
But the moon came slowly up in all her gentle glory, and the stars
looked out, and through the small compass of the grated window, as
through the narrow crevice of one good deed in a murky life of guilt,
the face of Heaven shone bright and merciful. He raised his head;
gazed upward at the quiet sky, which seemed to smile upon the earth in
sadness, as if the night, more thoughtful than the day, looked down in
sorrow on the sufferings and evil deeds of men; and felt its peace sink
deep into his heart. He, a poor idiot, caged in his narrow cell, was as
much lifted up to God, while gazing on the mild light, as the freest and
most favoured man in all the spacious city; and in his ill-remembered
prayer, and in the fragment of the childish hymn, with which he sung and
crooned himself asleep, there breathed as true a spirit as ever studied
homily expressed, or old cathedral arches echoed.
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