It required some efforts to subdue my rising emotions.

Compassion not only for Wallace, but for Thetford, his father, his wife and his child, caused a passionate effusion of tears.

I was ashamed of this useless and childlike sensibility; and attempted to apologize to my companion.

The sympathy, however, had proved contagious, and the stranger turned away his face to hide his own tears.
"Nay," said he, in answer to my excuses, "there is no need to be ashamed of thy emotion.

Merely to have known this family, and to have witnessed their deplorable fate, is sufficient to melt the most obdurate heart.