"Well, they were, 'See ma.'"
"The very words; and were they not enough for proof and belief?"
"Yes, sir; but there are words which have two significations. Ma' is the contraction, as you know, for mamma, but it is pronounced the same as maw, which is a word which we use to designate those birds otherwise called gulls. I recollect that while I was unable to bear the sight of the tortured bird, and had turned my head in another direction, my nephew kept looking over the rails, and that, as he saw the struggling creature, he cried out to me the words you misconstrued. And thus the mystery is cleared up."
"Miserable and fatal error," he gasped out, as he staggered back. "And the connection!—the connection! There was retribution in those diamond eyes."
"What mean you, sir?"
"The bird's eyes that haunt me in my reveries, and enter into the sockets of my dream-beings!"
"Are you mad?"
"No; or the heavens are mad, with their swirling orbs and blazing comets, that rush sighing through space before some terrible power that will give them no respite, except with the condition that when they rest they die."
"Poor youth! so early doomed; I pity you."
"Ay, pity those who have no pity—those are the truly wretched; for pity, in the world's life, is the soul of reason's action. Ah, madam, it is those who have pity who do not need the pity of others, for they are generally free from the faults that produce the unhappiness that needs pity."