"Nay, but warse. The lass herself tore the bandage frae her eyes, and she's gone stone blind, and that's foriver."
Hugh's head bent closer over the table.
"Good-night, Oglethorpe," he said.
Gubblum backed out, muttering to himself as he returned to the shaft, "A cool hand, how-an'-iver."
The moment the door closed, Hugh Ritson tramped the floor in restless perambulations. What had he thought of doing? Delivering himself to justice as a perjurer? Had he, then, no duty left in life that he must needs gratify his revenge in a kind of death? What of the woman who had suffered for him? What of the broken heart and the wretched home? Were these as nothing against the humiliation of a proud spirit?
Never for an instant, never in his bitterest agony, did Hugh Ritson lie to his own soul and say that the resolution he had formed was prompted by remorse for what he had done to Paul Ritson; not revenge for what he had suffered from Paul Drayton. To be a saint when sick; to find the conscience active when defeat overwhelmed it—that was for the weak dregs of humanity. But such paltering was not for him.
On the one hand revenge, on the other duty—which was he to follow? The wretched man could come to no decision; and when the fingers of his watch pointed to one o'clock he lay down on the couch to rest.
It was not sleep that he wanted; sleep had of late become too full of terrors; but sleep overcame him, nevertheless. His face, when he slept, was the face of a man in pain; and dreams came that were the distorted reflections of his waking thoughts. He dreamed that he had died in infancy. Calm, serene, very sweet, and peaceful, his little innocent face of childhood looked up from the white pillow. He thought his mother bent over him, and shed many tears; but he himself belonged to another world of beings, and looked down on both.
"It is better so," he thought, "and the tears she weeps are blest."
At this he awoke, and rose to his feet. What soft nothings men had said of sleep! "Oh, sleep, it is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole!" Gentle! More tyrannous than death. The melancholy perambulation ended, and he lay down once more. He slept and dreamed again. This time he had killed his own brother. A moment before they had stood face to face—vigorous, wrathful, with eyes that flashed, and hands uplifted. Now his brother lay quiet and awful at his feet, and the great silence was broken by a voice from heaven crying, "A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be on the earth!"