"The tackle of his heart was cracked and burned,
And all the shrouds wherewith his life should sail,
Are turned to one poor thread, one little hair."
There was a long pause.
"But why," said the Juez at length—"why did you waylay Mr Brail?"
"For two reasons," replied the dying bravo; "first, because I harboured revenge for the destruction of my vessel by the Midge, steered by him, as that young gentleman afterwards told me" (here De Walden and I exchanged looks), "on the bar of the African river; secondly, because he took my last stiver from me at the gaming-table."
"Evil motives both, my son, to be entertained by any, but especially by one standing on the threshold of eternity. Let me recall the priest, that he may shrive you, and probably, with God's blessing, induce you to repent before you go hence."
I turned to look at the person who spoke. He was a tall and very dark Spaniard, his age might have been sixty, and his short and scanty hair was of a silver grey. He was plainly dressed in black, and sat at a small table, and opposite to him the escribano, or notary, with his paper before him, and pen held up between him. and the candle, and ready wet with ink.
"It is of no use, and I will not," said Adderfang; "besides, if I am any thing at all, I am a Protestant—and as the tree falls, so must it lie—it is a part of my creed.—Creed!" he here interjected to himself with great bitterness—"my creed! whatever it may be of yours, and I feel that all the roots that knit me to the earth have already parted, save one; therefore, let me die, if not in peace, at least in quietness."
He stopped to take breath, and when he proceeded, it was in a voice even more weak and trembling than before.
"Yes, Heaven knows, villain as I have been, that they have all snapped but one"—and he caught the hand of the poor girl, and tried to place it on his heart, but his strength failed him. She wept aloud at this unexpected burst of feeling, and the contagion of her tears extended even to the stony heart of the wounded man himself. The iron had at length entered into his soul, and what the retrospect of his own ill-spent life—what the intensity of his present agony, and the fearful prospect before him through eternity, could not wring from him—now flowed at the sight of the poor girl's misery, as if his bosom had been a tender woman's. He wept aloud.
"Yes—my evil courses have but too justly estranged all my kindred from me; one friend has dropped off after another, until, in the prime of life, after having squandered a handsome patrimony, and having been educated as a gentleman, with every thing around me that ought to have made me happy, to this have I come at last!" He groaned heavily. "You see before you, Mr Brail, not a fiend, but an everyday villain—a man not naturally wicked—one who did not love evil for evil's sake, but who became the willing slave of his passions, and held no law, human or divine, in reverence, when they were to be gratified. Ay, William Adderfang, here you lie on a death-bed from violence—from a wound sustained in the act of stabbing and robbing another, to gratify revenge, and the paltry desire of repossessing money squandered at the gaming-table, and with the certainty that, if a miracle interposed, and you recovered, your life would still be taken on the scaffold. Ay, here you lie," continued he with increasing energy, "without one soul in the wide world to say God bless you, or to close your eyes when you are gone, but my poor Antonia here."