Read "The Robbers' Cave" by Charlotte Maria Tucker online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
If one feeling were more overpowering than another to Horace at that trying hour, it was the pang of remorse-despair of ever being able to make up by devotion in the future for ingratitude and disobedience in the past. Oh! That the selfish and self-willed would anticipate the hour of final separation from one whose tender love they are now throwing away as a worthless thing, under whose reproofs they chafe, for whose infirmities they have no indulgence! A time may come when they will in vain wish that by the loss of every earthly possession they could purchase one smile from the eyes, one fond word from the lips of a now neglected parent.
Horace was roused from his gloomy thoughts by the hoarse voice of Matteo. "Has any one brought the irons? " he said.