The Robbers' Cave by Charlotte Maria Tucker

We will now return to Raphael, who with keen and breathless interest had watched from the shade of the forest Horace's passage along the perilous ledge. When Marco's hand had been laid on the shoulder of the youth, the Rossignol could hardly refrain from springing forward to the rescue, and scarcely had Horace himself experienced greater satisfaction than did his friend when that startling danger was past. When the fugitive had disappeared from his view, Raphael, for the first time, appeared to have leisure to think of himself. To aid in the escape of a prisoner was, as he well knew, a crime to be atoned for only with life. Raphael was young, and notwithstanding the recent bereavement, which had been like the wrenching away of a heart-string, life was to Raphael a precious thing, not to be parted with lightly.

As he stood with folded arms under the of the waving boughs, a sense of the loveliness of nature came on his poet-soul with a soothing, softening power. He felt loath to leave God's beautiful world. How divinely fair looked the scene before him, beneath the silvery rays of the moon! How wooingly breathed the night-breeze upon his feverish brow! How sweet sounded the nightingale's song, warbled soft through the stilly air! Hope, even earthly hope, was not dead in that young bosom; there was still a desire for human love and for human happiness there. Raphael thought of Horace, blessed with friends, a mother, a home; not, indeed, with envy, but with the instinctive yearning of a tender and loving nature for the sympathy of human hearts, of which he had known so little.