, death struck down 
the father, and but few days and nights of  and 
 had passed before his heir lay dead beside him ^ 
and the life of the boy who alone of all survived, 1 ay tremb- 
ling in the balance. For a long while it seemed uncertain 
whether God had not forgotten the race that had so long 
forgotten Him ; whether He had not turned away His face, 
and they should all die and turn again to their dust ; whe- 
ther the memory of them should not be rooted off of the 
earth, and their name perish from among tfee children of 
men. For a long while, the boy lay between life and death, 
cvt when at last life conquered, and he came back to the 



454 BUTLEDGE. 

changed and desolated world, it was with but little grat> 
tude for the boon that had been granted him, with ahnost 
a  of the life that had been spared to him. 

It is not necessary to the purposes of my story nor will il 
further its elucidation, to repeat the history of the years that 
followed. It is sufficient that they were years of misan 
thropy and , almost of infidelity. Travel, change, 
society, neither attracted nor soothed him ; the life he led 
it suited no one to join him in, and in the midst