For all his ignorance of it, he has a presentiment of danger, sprung from the consciousness of his crime. This, and no sentiment of remorse, or repentance, wrings from him the self-interrogation, several times repeated:—
“Why the devil did I do it?”
He regrets the deed, not because grieving at its guilt, but the position it has placed him in—one of dread danger, with no advantage derived, nothing to compensate him for the crime. No wonder at his asking, in the name of the Devil, why he has done it!
He is being punished for it now; if not through remorse of conscience, by coward craven fear. He feels what other criminals have felt before—what, be it hoped, they will ever feel—how hard it is to sleep the sleep of the assassin, or lie awake on a murderer’s bed.
On the last Richard Darke lies; since this night he sleeps not at all. From the hour of retiring to his chamber, till morning’s dawn comes creeping through the window, he has never closed eye; or, if so, not in the sweet oblivion of slumber.
He is still turning upon his couch, chafing in fretful apprehension, when daylight breaks into his bedroom, and shows its shine upon the floor. It is the soft blue light of a southern morn, which usually enters accompanied by bird music—the songs of the wild forest warblers mingling with domestic voices not so melodious. Among these the harsh “screek” of the guinea-fowl; the more sonorous call of the turkey “gobbler;” the scream of the goose, always as in agony; the merrier cackle of the laying hen, with the still more cheerful note of her lord—Chanticleer.
All these sounds hears Dick Darke, the agreeable as the disagreeable. Both are alike to him on this morning, the second after the murder.
Far more unpleasant than the last are some other sounds which salute his ear, as he lies listening. Noises which, breaking out abruptly, at once put an end to the singing of the forest birds, and the calling of the farm-yard fowls.
They are of two kinds; one, the clattering of horses’ hoofs, the other, the clack and clangour of men’s voices. Evidently there are several, speaking at the same time, and all in like tone—this of anger, of vengeance!
At first they seem at some distance off, but evidently drawing nigh.