up any winter store. He had picked out the sharpest stones of the brook and laid them for his couch, and he fled from the face of man. Patrobus when a boy had often attempted to speak to him, and had many times contrived to cross his path. But he only turned his eyes wildly or mournfully on him, shook his head, or brandished his arm, and fled, or stalked away, according as his humour then happened to be. Once, and only once, when he followed him with looks and words of sorrow, the maniac turned with a benignant smile, and raised his withered hand over the stripling's glossy hair as if to bless him, but suddenly withdrawing it, began to wound himself with briars and flints, as if he mourned some broken vow, as if to have heard and felt the voice of pity had been some deadly monstrous crime. This poor unfortunate had often been seen on moon-light nights, (at which time his disorder raged the most,) the pale beams falling Then on his snowy raiment, walking frantically down the valley, and looking like its troubled spirit. At these times he would gather deadly herbs and crush them for their juice. he would return with a slow step dragging a heavy fragment of the rock to the borders of the lake, look cautiously and fearfully round and plunge it in, while the lunatic answered the sullen dash of the waters with a groan of horror. At other times he walked with folded arms F that rested on his breast, as if an infant nestled there, then danced them in the air, E then stood amazed as if he had let something drop, then suddenly scratching up the earth would dig a hole, and heaping it again, >would shape it like a baby's grave, and strew it thick with lilies and mountain thyme. Then would he sit down beside it, and rest his fevered brain upon his burning hand, and there his watchers left him. These little graves were often found up and down the valley, covered with half faded flowers, and claiming the tribute of a starting tear or passing sigh for the afflicted being who raised them. In other parts were seen mangled heaps of hemlock, and bundles of the deadly nightshade with its mournful drooping bells, crushed between two stones. And thus it was made doubtful whether it were crime or sorrow that most preyed upon his mind. But be it which it might, it called for compassion. Man, proud man, forgets to pass sentence on the wretch whose soul is torn by remorse. At the sound of his groans, Justice drops her sword, the fillet falls from her brow, and her stern looks are changed at once to those of dove-eyed pity. This poor creature's weight of grief was often in Patrobus' thoughts, though he was then of an age not apt to think of sorrow. He used to scatter food for him in the valley at times when the earth produced no fruit. He sought for him one winter when the weather had been more than usually severe, and he had not seen him in any of his usual haunts, he feared he might suffer from famine. He He climbed up to his den, but found him not; his flinty couch seemed to have been lately set with sharper stones, that bore the bleeding marks of self-inflicted torture. looked up and down the valley, and inquired for him among the neighbouring shepherds, but no one could tell any thing of him. Some supposed that he had destroyed himself, and others, that he had retreated to some more cheerless spot. This lake indeed looked more like the abode of spotless innocence, than torturing guilt; yet probably the poor maniac chose the place as most suitable to nourish penitence and remorse, and this tranquil lake that presented. to the untroubled mind nothing but images of peaceful beauty, might, if connected in his conscience with circumstances of guilt, seem to him as the very mouth of hell. Yet probably time and familiarity with the object, had weakened the keenness of his first sensations, and his restless spirit might seek relief in more intense sufferings. Alas! that any should not know who alone binds up the wounded mind, and heals by |