"Wherefore, Oran? Alas, wherefore?"
"For what I have done to you; for what—But it is nothing. But say it, though; say it, or hope for no friend in the thing you speak of."
"God forgive you then, Oran," muttered the brother, almost mechanically; "I forgive you myself."
"It is enough," said Oran—"Farewell." And these were the last words Hyland ever heard him utter. He descended from the wall—how the prisoner knew no more than how he had climbed it,—and that so suddenly, that although Hyland called to him again, the moment the farewell had past his lips, he was already beyond hearing. Finding that he was really gone, the prisoner fell upon his knees, and strove to invoke forgiveness of the act he meditated: for he rightly felt that it must be but a form of self-murder.
He then threw himself on his couch, looked back upon the events that had marked his existence in the valley, and wept over the misery they had entailed upon one whom his love had wrapped in the same destruction with himself.
CHAPTER XVII.
| Convict by many witnesses and proofs, And by thine own confession. MARINO FALIERO. |
The Master of Fiction has compared the course of a supposititious history to the career of a stone, rolled down the side of a mountain; which, at first, labouring and stumbling along, in a slow and hesitating manner, as if on the point of being arrested by every petty obstruction, gathers force as it descends, and at last pitches onwards with impetuous leaps, which soon conduct it to the bottom. To give the figure the completeness of an allegory, it may be added, that when the moving body has once acquired a little superfluous momentum of its own, it communicates it to other stones, and these again to others, which, increasing in number as they grow in velocity, are at last seen rattling down to the vale below, in a perfect avalanche, as confounding to the senses as it is hurrying to the spirits. In this manner, a single incident begins its weary course along the declivity of story, stirring up others as it rolls onward; until, in the end, there is such a mass in motion, that, if all were to be described as fully as at the starting, it would require a Briareus himself to do them justice. It is, then, difficult to keep pace even with the original event, the course of which is as violent as the others; and this can be done only by imitating the hurry of the moving body, and marching, in great leaps, to the end.
We must pass by, with a word, the confusion caused throughout the whole village by the rencounter in the prison-yard; the steps that were taken in consequence to follow the refugee who had escaped; the proceedings that were had in relation to the bodies, (for the wounded Staples expired within a few hours after his surrender;) and, finally, those that paved the way for the trial of the unfortunate Hyland.