Ada, the Betrayed; Or, The Murder at the Old Smithy. A Romance of Passion

by James Malcolm Rymer

Gray put up his hands and held Learmont’s arm, while he shook the chair on which he sat by his trembling, and thus in awful silence did these two men regard each other for more than a minute, each enduring mental agony, such only as the wicked are doomed to suffer. It was an awful picture—ghastly and dreadful to imagine—a scene to haunt the brain in sleep, and people vacancy with horror. The dim spectral-looking light, lighting up the distorted features of these two men, whose souls seemed to be concentrated in their dilated eye-balls, as they glared at each other with the fixedness of marble statues. Then there was the huge bulky form of the smith, at the crevice of the door, which he had enlarged to allow himself a view of what was passing in the room, with the bright shining instrument of death clutched in his grasp, and gloating over the prospect of the blood which was to be shed—the crushed bones and the mangled flesh he was to exult over—the prayers for mercy choked in gore. Oh, it was horrible!

Learmont was the first to speak, and when he did so, his voice was hoarse, and for want of breath his words came strangely disjointed from his lips.

“The confession—the confession—the confession,” he said.

Then Gray seemed to feel that death was at hand, and he slid from the chair on his knees, crying,—

“Mercy—mercy—mercy.”

“Hush,” said Learmont, dwelling upon the word till it became a long hissing sound. “Hush! The confession—the confession. Speak above your breath and you die—the confession.”

He still kept his grasp of Gray, and shook him to and fro as much from his own nervousness as from design.

It was awful then to hear Jacob Gray, in a husky whisper, pleading for his life—praying for that mercy he had never himself shown, and appealing to feelings which had no existence in the breasts of either Learmont or himself.

“Spare me—spare me,” he said, “and I will go far away from you. Oh, spare my life, and that mercy you now show to me will plead with Heaven for you, while I have no such hope. Oh, spare me.”

“The confession—the confession.”