Then an awful scream burst from his lips. His face was horribly distorted.
“It is true,” he cried, and fell back and rolled on the bed.
All that night the fiery hand lay on the blacksmith's brain, and he tossed in a wild delirium.
The wind's wail ran round the house, and the voice of that brother wanderer, the river beneath the bridge crept over the silence when the sufferer lay quiet and the wind was still.
No candle was now lighted, but the fire on the hearth burnt bright. Mrs. Garth sat before it, hardly once glancing up.
Again and again her son cried to her with the yearning cry of a little child. At such times the old woman would shrink within herself, and moan and cower over the fire, and smoke a little black pipe.
Hour after hour the blacksmith rolled in his bed in a madness too terrible to record. The memory of his blasphemies seemed to come back upon him in his raving, and add fresh agony to his despair.
A naked soul stood face to face with the last reality, battling meantime, with an unseen foe. There was to be no jugglery now.
Oh! that awful night, that void night, that night of the wind's wail and the dismal moan of the wandering river, and the frequent cry of a poor, miserable, desolate, despairing, naked soul! Had its black wings settled forever over all the earth?
No. The dawn came at last. Its faint streak of light crept lazily in at the curtainless window.