"Why, Brown," said I with some surprise, "surely you can have no scruple about that poor wretch's death? Why, he has all but murdered poor Harry—if, indeed, he ever gets over it."
"Very true, very true," replied Brown, looking at the bed where Chesterton was lying in utter unconsciousness; "he seems to sleep very quietly now. I don't think he knew any one just now when he opened his eyes: did you see the blow, Hawthorne?"
"Yes," said I; "the lock of the gun is broken, and I fancy that saved him; but he would have had little chance from a second: that shot came just in time."
"I covered the man from the moment he first raised the bar: your head was in a line with him, or I should have fired sooner. I hardly thought you would have escaped some part of the charge as it was. Well, if poor Harry lives, perhaps it is well as it is, if not"—
"You have but spared the hangman some trouble," said I. "Come, man, don't give way to this morbid feeling. I don't say but what it does you credit, Brown, to regret the necessity for taking a man's life, even to save your friend's; but, depend upon it, your conduct to-night is justifiable before a far higher inquest than the coroner's. Do you think if I had been in your place I should have hesitated one instant? No! nor have been half as scrupulous afterwards, I fear."
"You have not blood upon your hand," said Brown gloomily. "And remember, if we had taken poor Chesterton's advice, and frightened them off at first, all this might have been spared; it was my folly in determining to take upon myself the office of thief-taker—cursed folly it was!"
The impression which the events of the last hour had left upon my own mind was any thing but a pleasant one; but I was obliged to assume an indifference which I did not feel, and use a lighter tone than I should willingly have done in speaking of the death of a fellow-creature, however unavoidable, in order to keep up Brown's spirits, and prevent him from dwelling upon his share in the catastrophe with that morbid degree of sensitiveness, of the effects of which I began to be really apprehensive. He wanted me to lie down and try to sleep, saying that he would watch with Chesterton; but this I was in no mood to agree to, even had I not been unwilling to leave him to his present reflections; so we drew a small table close to the fire in the sitting-room, leaving the door open that we might hear any movement of the patient, and waited for daybreak with feelings to which perhaps we had been too little accustomed. They were doubtless wholesome for us in after life; but at the time those hours of watching were painful indeed. It was a night which, then and since, I wished could be blotted from my page of life, and be as if it had never been. I have grown older and sadder, if not wiser, since, and feel now that there are recollections in which I then took delight which I could far more safely part with.
The danger in Chesterton's case, though at one time imminent, was soon over; and a few days' quiet at the farm enabled him to be removed to college. Reading was, of course, forbidden him for some time; and before term began, he had left Oxford with his father, to keep perfectly quiet for a few months in the country. The gratitude which he and all his family expressed to Brown as having been undoubtedly the means of saving his life, was naturally unbounded; and it did more than all else to reconcile him to the idea which haunted him, as he declared, day and night, of having that man's blood upon his head. I knew that Chesterton had warmly pressed him to come home with him; but as his name was down for the approaching examination, for which he was quite sufficiently prepared, it was not without astonishment that I heard him one morning, just before Chesterton's departure, announce his intention of going down with him and his father.
"I think," said he, "the constant sight of poor Harry will do me good just now; I am not given to romancing, Hawthorne, as you know; but waking or sleeping, when I am by myself, I see that man standing with the crow-bar uplifted just as he was when I shot him; and I think, if I can but manage to get Harry Chesterton's figure between him and me, as it was that night, and feel that pulling the trigger perhaps saved his life, why then the picture will be something less horrible that it is now."
"Well," said I, "John, I think you do right; but I can tell you this, that the same sort of tableau is very often before my eyes; and the horror that I feel is what I did then—seeing Chesterton's brains knocked out, as I thought, and struggling in vain to get near him; sooner than feel that again in reality—the thought of it is bad enough—I'd shoot that villain ten times running, if I only had the chance."