Page 357 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

don of watch-dogs, in addition to the soldier guard. He was
retaken, of course, flogged, and weighted with heavier irons.
The second time, they sent him to the Coal Mines, where
the prisoners lived underground, worked half-naked, and
dragged their inspecting gaolers in wagons upon iron tram-
ways, when such great people condescended to visit them.
The day on which he started for this place he heard that Syl-
via was dead, and his last hope went from him.
Then began with him a new religion. He worshipped the
dead. For the living, he had but hatred and evil words; for
the dead, he had love and tender thoughts. Instead of the
phantoms of his vanished youth which were wont to visit
him, he saw now but one vision—the vision of the child who
had loved him. Instead of conjuring up for himself pictures
of that home circle in which he had once moved, and those
creatures who in the past years had thought him worthy of
esteem and affection, he placed before himself but one idea,
one embodiment of happiness, one being who was without
sin and without stain, among all the monsters of that pit
into which he had fallen. Around the figure of the innocent
child who had lain in his breast, and laughed at him with
her red young mouth, he grouped every image of happiness
and love. Having banished from his thoughts all hope of
resuming his name and place, he pictured to himself some
quiet nook at the world’s end— a deep-gardened house in
a German country town, or remote cottage by the English
seashore, where he and his dream-child might have lived
together, happier in a purer affection than the love of man
for woman. He bethought him how he could have taught

For the Term of His Natural Life