To rush to the door, to throw across it a long, heavy iron bar, which would resist assaults of no common strength, was his first impulse. Thus enabled to gain time for reflection, his active and alarmed mind ran over the whole field of expedient and conjecture. Again, “Murderer!” “Stay me not,” cried Walter, from below; “my hand shall seize the murderer!”
Guess was now over; danger and death were marching on him. Escape,—how? whither? The height forbade the thought of flight from the casement! The door?—he heard loud steps already hurrying up the stairs; his hands clutched convulsively at his breast, where his fire-arms were generally concealed,—they were left below. He glanced one lightning glance round the room; no weapon of any kind was at hand. His brain reeled for a moment, his breath gasped, a mortal sickness passed over his heart, and then the MIND triumphed over all. He drew up to his full height, folded his arms doggedly on his breast, and muttering, “The accuser comes,—I have it still to refute the charge!” he stood prepared to meet, nor despairing to evade, the worst.
As waters close over the object which divided them, all these thoughts, these fears, and this resolution had been but the work, the agitation, and the succeeding calm of the moment; that moment was past.
“Admit us!” cried the voice of Walter Lester, knocking fiercely at the door.
“Not so fervently, boy,” said Lester, laying his hand on his nephew’s shoulder; “your tale is yet to be proved,—I believe it not. Treat him as innocent, I pray,—I command,—till you have shown him guilty.”
“Away, uncle!” said the fiery Walter; “he is my father’s murderer. God hath given justice to my hands.” These words, uttered in a lower key than before, were but indistinctly heard by Aram through the massy door.
“Open, or we force our entrance!” shouted Walter again; and Aram, speaking for the first time, replied in a clear and sonorous voice, so that an angel, had one spoken, could not have more deeply impressed the heart of Rowland Lester with a conviction of the student’s innocence,
“Who knocks so rudely? What means this violence? I open my doors to my friends. Is it a friend who asks it?”
“I ask it,” said Rowland Lester, in a trembling and agitated voice. “There seems some dreadful mistake: come forth, Eugene, and rectify it by a word.”
“Is it you, Rowland Lester? It is enough. I was but with my books, and had secured myself from intrusion. Enter.” The bar was withdrawn, the door was burst open, and even Walter Lester, even the officers of justice with him, drew back for a moment as they beheld the lofty brow, the majestic presence, the features so unutterably calm, of Eugene Aram. “What want you, sirs?” said he, unmoved and unfaltering, though in the officers of justice he recognized faces he had known before, and in that distant town in which all that he dreaded in the past lay treasured up. At the sound of his voice the spell that for an instant had arrested the step of the avenging son melted away.