stand their relation to each other so well; and the private phase of these occurrences and of his own feelings, which my nephew portrayed to me in his letters, throws such a light on the facts themselves, that I seem about to detail experiences, instead of to record occurrences in which I had no part. The combination of circumstances which led to the dreadful atrocity by which my sister's son, in the fullest flow of his hope, was foully murdered, is so remarkable, that contemplating them now, at a distance of time, the impression I receive is almost as vivid as when they were first known to me. Time alters to us the aspect of nearly all joys or sorrows; or rather, time allows us to alter our relations to the facts from which our pleasures or troubles may spring. But, whatever may have altered around me, my own particular feeling in estimating the matter does not seem to have changed. I still feel, whenever I turn to it, much as I imagine an animal may feel when its instincts are raised to their fiercest expression on feeling itself robbed of its young. I feel all the baffled hopes writhe, and turn where they have been so ruthlessly cut short to a thirst for vengeance. This is a feeling which, had I been a young man, might have carried me to the antipodes to seek out his murderer and revenge his death. Yet I am able now, as I was then, to argue how wrong such a feeling is, how foolishly wrong. What would be the use of the teachings of civilisation, religion, or even worldly experience, if impulses which belong so closely to imperfect nature alone that we find the best likeness for them in the instincts of the brute were not to be chained or tempered by them? But our nature is so imperfect that we cannot make theory accord with practice always. There are insults and wrongs which our imperfect nature (mine at least) feels to be beyond the reach of ordinary laws. I am an old soldier, and perhaps have acquired such ideas from my profession. It is with a terrible feeling that I think upon poor Philip's murder at all times. I cannot help it. It is |Hirhapg wrong— I know it is wrong; but still it is so. The law never discovered or overtook his murderer, that I know of. I struggle hard often to think my fearful wish, that 1 had been able in revenge to shoot him like a dog, is not a darling wish with me; that it grows weaker with time; that it is a weak ness, and not a crime, so to wish to put our hand upon God's purposes. But I always find it fast rooted among my doubts.
Philip was my only sister's son. His father was a scoundrel, and ill treated his wife in numberless ways till the clay of his death. She then lived with me for some years, and her child was born under my roof. He grew up in the light of a son to me; and when we lost his mother, I promised her that I would treat him as a son. When he came back from Rugby, in 1852, he was seventeen years of age. I designed him for the army, and he would have shone in it; he would have done his duty. I know my judgment was not wrong in that. He came back, however, with a craving after adventure which puzzled me somewhat at first. It disturbed my plans for him. I did not want to check it, for it was not ignoble. Unfortunately, there was no service to be seen just then; and had I sent him, as I had at first intended, into the army at once, he might have misinterpreted the duties of a soldier in peace, and failed to appreciate the charm there is in discharging faithfully and completely the most unnoticed duties of a soldier's life. He might have viewed them in a false light. He was one of those youngsters who at school are dubbed "lucky." In every game of chance, and, indeed, almost every thing he engaged in, luck seemed to stick to his fingers. Whether the incense which simple success is always greeted with may have tended to foster the idea, or whether the wonderful and 'highly-coloured accounts which were daily published first drew him on, I can not tell, but he desired more than anything to go and dig gold on the Australian fields. He had an idea, which he tried to explain to me, that the small pieces of gold which were washed out of the soil by the diggers must have been detached from some rich system of gold, which could be discovered. He wished to explore, and seek fortune thus in a short time. I could not but consent, and he left me. I never saw him again.
CHAPTER II.
