Another silence followed, which Ashwoode again abruptly interrupted.
"You know all this story?—of course you do—everybody does—how the wretches have trapped me—isn't it terrible—isn't it dreadful? Oh! you cannot know what it is to mope about this place alone, when it is growing dark, as I do every evening, and in the night time. If I had been another man, I'd have been raving mad by this time. I said alone—did I?" he continued, with increasing excitement; "oh! that it were!—oh! that it were! He comes there—there," he screamed, pointing to the foot of the bed, "with all those infernal cloths and fringes about his face, morning and evening. Ah, God! such a thing—half idiot, half fiend; and still the same, though I curse him till I'm hoarse, he won't leave it. Can't they wait—can't they wait? for-ever is a long day. As I'm a living man, he's with me every night—there—there is the body, gaping and nodding—there—there—there!"
As he shouted this with frantic and despairing horror, shaking his clenched hands toward the place of his dreaded nightly visitant, O'Connor felt a thrill of horror such as he had never known before, and hardly recovered from this painful feeling, when Sir Henry Ashwoode turned to the little table on which, among many things, a vessel of water was placed, and filling some out into a cracked cup, he added to it drops from a phial, and hastily swallowed the mixture.
"Laudanum is all the philosophy or religion I can boast; it's well to have even so much," said he, returning the bottle to his pocket. "It's a dead secret, though, that I have got any; this is a present from the doctor they allow me to see, and I'm on honour not—to poison myself—isn't it comical?—for fear he should get into a scrape; but I've another game to play—no fear of that—no, no."
Another silence followed, and Sir Henry Ashwoode said quickly,—
"What do the people say about it? Do they think I forged that accursed bond? Do they think me guilty?"
O'Connor declared his entire ignorance of public rumour, alleging his own illness, and consequent close confinement, as the cause of it.
"They sha'n't believe me guilty, no, they sha'n't. Look ye, sir, I have one good feeling left," he resumed, vehemently; "I will not let my name suffer. If the most resolute firmness to the very last, and the most solemn renunciation of the charges preferred against me, reiterated at the foot of the gallows, with the halter about my neck—if these can beget a belief of my innocence, my name shall be clear—my name shall not suffer; this last outrage I will avert; but oh, my God! is there no chance yet—must I—must I perish? Will no one save me—will no one help me? Oh, God! oh, God! is there no pity—no succour; must it come?"
Thus crying, he threw himself forward upon the table, while every joint and muscle quivered and heaved with fierce hysterical sobs which, more like a succession of short convulsive shrieks than actual weeping, betrayed his agony, while O'Connor looked on with a mixture of horror and pity, which all that was past could not suppress.