"No time," says Robert Burns (in one of his unpublished letters preserved at Edinburgh), "can cast a light further on the present resolves of the human mind; but time will reconcile, and has reconciled, many a man to that iniquity which at first he abhorred."
The appearance of Zuares had even a more exciting effect on Hawkshaw than that of Pedro.
Zuares, the unwitting matricide of the Barranca Secca, was a more youthful but equally picturesque-looking ruffian. He was decidedly handsome, with well-cut features; his eyes and nose were very fine; but he had a cruel and savage mouth, which he inherited from his Mexican blood.
It seemed the very machination of Satan, or of a retributive destiny, that, after he had so fearfully rid himself of Ashton, now placed him in the same ship with these two men.
If seen by them, if known and recognised, he felt himself lost with Ethel, Mr. Basset, and all on board.
Should they meet him face to face, he dare not decline their recognition, and with that recognition the assumption or resumption of an old and insolent familiarity, from which he had everything to dread, and from which he shrank instinctively now.
Poor wretch! his position was far from enviable.
He felt conscious, probably, that he had led a wild and reckless, a wandering and unprofitable life; but softened now by his regard for Ethel Basset—though even that regard was full of self-interest and selfishness—he mentally resolved that, if he were spared from this disaster, this hourly terror of exposure, and if he escaped the toils and perils in which those Barradas could involve him, that he would turn over a new leaf, and be for the future a better man.
"Ah, these new leaves!" exclaims Digby Grand; "if the half of them were turned over, what a gigantic volume they would form in the life of many of us!"
With this resolution, perhaps, he strove to soothe the remorse, or guilt, he felt for the outrage on Morley Ashton. It was not his first crime, probably, nor the first time he had taken the life of a fellow-creature in some fashion.