“ Over Sunny's pillow (for in this dream he seemed to himself waking and watching) he saw a hovering spirit, the incarnate shape of Light, gazing at the sleeping child with ineffable tenderness; but its keen eyes caught the aspect of Roger's Shadow; the pure lineaments glowed with something more divinely awful than anger, and with levelled lance it assailed that evil Presence and bore it to the ground; but the Shadow slipped aside from the spear, and cowered into distance; the angelic face saddened, and, stooping downward, folded Sunny in its arms as if to bear her away. ”

“ The girl hesitated, and would have drawn back, but Roger bade her come near.
"There is no need of your going, Violet," said he; and she crouched quietly on the rock at his feet, silently, but with fixed eyes, regarding the double nature before her, the Man and his Shadow.
Still upward from the valley crept that low shiver of dread; the pale sun shed its listless light on the gray rocks and dusky cedars; the silent unexpectant earth seemed to have paused; all things were wrapt in vague awe and dim apprehension; some inexpressible fatality seemed to oppress life and breath. ”

“ When we were first friends, I knew nothing of that darkness. I tried with all purity and compassion to draw you upward into light; and for reward, you have wrapped your own blackness round me, and hate your own doing. My work is over,--is in vain! It remains only that I free myself from this Shadow, and leave you to the mercy of a Power with whom no such Presence can cope,--in whom no darkness nor shadow may abide."
She turned to leave him with these words, but cast back a look of such love and tender pity, that she seemed to Roger the very Spirit that had borne Sunny away. ”

“ Here and there, too, out of sight of mill or village, a quiet farmer's house, trimly painted, with barns and hay-stacks and wood-piles drawn up in goodly array, stands in its old orchard, and offers the front of a fortress against want and misery. Idle aspect! fortress of vain front! there are intangible foes that no man may conquer! In such a stronghold was born Roger Pierce, the Man with two Shadows. ”

“ But when, at length, the novelty of Sunny's presence wore off, her claims grew tiresome. In the faith of her child's heart, she came as frankly to Roger for help or comfort as she had ever done; and he found his own plans for study or pleasure constantly interrupted by her requests or caresses, till the Shadow darkened again beside him, and, looking over his shoulder, fell so close to Sunny, that his old belief drew its veil across his eyes for a moment, and he started at the sight of what he dreaded,--a Shadow haunting Sunny. ”

“ In proportion as the gloom of this black Presence seemed to be lightened over any one was his esteem for him; but by daily looking so steadily and with such a will to see only darkness in the hearts of men, he discovered traces of the Shadow even in Jimmy Doane,--and the darkness shut down, like night at sea, over all the world then. ”

“ The river flows past, a languid stream of lead; a single crow, screaming for its mate, flaps heavily against the north-east gale, that enters here also and lifts the carpet in long waves across the floor, whiffles light eddies of ashes in the chimney-corner, and vainly presses on door and window, like a houseless spirit shrieking and pining for a shelter from its bodiless and helpless unrest in the elements. ”

“ So by degrees she went back to her own pleasures, full of tender thought for every living thing, and a loving consciousness of their wants and ways. Her lisping voice chattered brook-like to birds and bees; her lip curled grievously over the broken wing of a painted moth, or the struggles of a drowning fly; in Nature's company she played as with an infant ever divine; and no darkness assailed the never-weary child. ”

“ Seeing, as Roger Pierce did, in every action of others toward himself the dark atmosphere of the Shadow that was peculiarly his own, he watched also their mutual actions, and, throwing from his own obscurity a shade over all human deeds, he became possessed of the monomania, a practical belief that every mortal man, except it might be Jimmy Doane, was followed and overlooked by this terrible Second Shadow. ”

“ The Man With Two Shadows.
"There is ever a black spot in our sunshine." Carlyle.
The sky is gray with unfallen sleet; the wind howls bitterly about the house; relentless in its desperate speed, it whirls by green crosses from the fir-boughs in the wood,--dry russet oak-leaves,--tiny cones from the larch, that were once rose-red with the blood of Spring, but now rattle on the leafless branches, black and bare as they. ”

“ Never could he know the hardy self-reliance of those whom life casts upon their own strength and care; the wisdom and the love that lived for him lived in him, and he grew to be a boy as the tropic blossom of a hot-house grows, without thought or toil. ”

“ No leaf remains on any bough of the forest, no scarlet streamer of brier flaunts from the steadfast rocks that underlie all verdure, and now stand out, bleak and barren, the truths and foundations of life, when its ornate glories are fled away. ”

“ Whether with successful conflict he fought with the evil and prevailed, and showed himself a man,--or whether the Thing renewed its dominion, and he drew to himself another nature, not for the good power of its pure contact, but for the further increase of that darkness, and the blinding of another soul, is never yet to be known. ”