The Doctor's reflections on his return.
HOW much safer am I now?” thought the doctor, as he pursued his way home in the dark, and reflected on all that had just transpired, and on the probable consequences of it. “To-morrow there will be a jury,—it cannot be avoided; and I shall be called to give evidence, and Fanny, who saw it all, will be called also. She suspects something, and may tell all until she raises suspicions in the minds of others. Would that she too were out of the way, and then—then I should be finally secure!”
But as he thus thought on another death, the dread of the last came strongly upon him; and his skin seemed to creep upon his bones. He fancied there was a body lying in the road, and several times he checked his horse to avoid trampling upon it, or turned him suddenly aside in order to pass it by.
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He could see the shadowy lineaments of the man he had murdered flickering about in the doubtful air, with the very folds of the bed-clothes which his own hand had gathered round it, pictured in misty but accurate lines, like an artist's first sketch emerging from a ground of dark and indistinct space. He grew anxious to get home. He wondered how it was that never in his life before had any sight so haunted him, and yet he had seen many worse agonies than that,—many. Yes; he had seen old sinners die,—stubborn and unrepentant to the last; he had seen them die, and make no sign of hope of Heaven's grace. And he had seen young maids die of very terror at the thought and name of death. Yet these were nothing. They were happiness itself to what he had witnessed that night. When he arrived at home, his wife remarked that he looked pale and ill.
“No, my dear,” he replied, “I am very well indeed,—wonderfully well. I never felt better in my life. I can assure you, you are mistaken.” He sat down to his supper; but as he tried to carve, his knife slipped, and he did not try it again. The face of the lawyer seemed to be over the table, dancing about in the broad beams of the candlelight.
“You tremble, Frank!” cried his wife; “your hand shakes. How did you leave Skinwell?”