"Oh, Hadley," he pleaded in piteous tones, "do not look upon me in that way! Take from me those mournful eyes, oh, take them away! for that look burns into my heart! Hadley! Hadley! have pity on me! and spare me! Am I not tormented enough already?"
But we will not linger to depict this harrowing scene. When the fever subsided he was weak as an infant. His mother asked him if he knew her, and he whispered:
"Yes, oh, yes! God forgive me for bringing your 'grey hairs in sorrow to the grave!' Oh, that I could die with your forgiveness graven upon my heart; but I dare not hope—I dare not pray for it!"
"God bless you, my son! and forgive you as I do!" passionately exclaimed the parent; and her heart was writhing with agony!
What a fearful thing it is to bow a parent's head with shame! to crush out the joy from a tender mother's heart, and shut the light from her spirit forever! And, oh, what a fearful thing to die with this consciousness burning into the soul like the sting of scorpions!
None of the horrid visions that visited his fevered brain in the hours of delirium were half so painful as the anguished expression on that mother's face. It sunk to the great deep of the guilty son's soul; and, with that pale face bending over him, his last glimpse of earth, his sight paled and his spirit left its clay tenement for eternity. What a lesson in his life and death!
CHAPTER XXII.
THE DISGUISED VILLAINS MEET HADLEY—THE RESULT—CONCLUSION.
As already stated, Bill and Dick had disguised themselves in the garb of gentlemen, and with certain disfigurements of countenance which completely hid their features and rendered it impossible to identify them, either in their character of villainous murderers, or as the abductors, on a former occasion, of their present captive. When Bill first discovered Eveline in the woods, he was about to make known to her that he and Dick were the friends who had promised to liberate her, but on second thought he deemed it best to keep up the disguise, and learn, if possible, whether she had any knowledge of his real intentions and their ultimate destination. Hence her inability to trace the voice, which sounded so familiar, to the wily villain who had enticed her to meet Hadley for the purpose of placing her in Duffel's power.