“What am I, that you should clasp me thus?” he cried; and a voice from his inmost heart replied, “A murderer!” The cold sweat rolled in great drops down his brow, while the foam of agony dewed his pallid lips, and his frame trembled in a terrible convulsion. Confused and fearful images of bloodshed and its penalty, the crime and the scaffold, commingled, worked in his maddened brain. He heard the rush of feet, as if thousands were hurrying on, to see him die, and voices that swelled like the sea at midnight. Nor was the vision all unreal: for already two men had entered the hut.
The dreadful torture of his thoughts had now reached its climax, and with a bound Owen sprang from his sleep, and cried in a shriek of heart-wrung anguish, “No, never—I am not a murderer. Owen Connor can meet his death like a man, but not with blood upon him.”
“Owen Connor! Owen Connor, did you say?” repeated one of the two who stood before him; “are you, then, Owen Connor?”
“I am,” replied Owen, whose dreams were still the last impression on his mind. “I give myself up;—do what ye will with me;—hang, imprison, or transport me; I'll never gainsay you.”
“Owen, do you not know me?” said the other, removing his travelling cap, and brushing back the hair from his forehead.
“No, I know nothing of you,” said he, fiercely.
“Not remember your old friend—your landlord's son, Owen?”
Owen stared at him without speaking; his parted lips and fixed gaze evidencing the amazement which came over him.
“You saved my life, Owen,” said the young man, horror-struck by the withered and wasted form of the peasant.
“And you have made me this,” muttered Owen, as he let fall the pistol from his bosom. “Yes,” cried he, with an energy very different from before, “I came out this night, sworn to murder that man beside you—your agent, Lucas; my soul is perjured if my hands are not bloody.”