There are thoughts as high as heaven.—Old Spanish Romanes.
THE soul sometimes has sudden inspirations, brilliant flashes whose extent can no more be expressed, whose depth can no more be sounded by an entire volume of thoughts and reflections, than the brightness of a thousand torches can reproduce the intense, swift radiance of a flash of lightning.
We will not, therefore, try to analyze the overwhelming and secret impulse which upon young Norbith’s proposal led the noble son of the Norwegian viceroy to join a party of bandits who had risen in revolt to defend a proscribed man. It was doubtless a generous desire to fathom this dark scheme at any cost, mixed with a bitter loathing for life, a reckless indifference to the future; perhaps some vague doubt of Schumacker’s guilt, inspired by all the various incidents which struck the young man as equivocal and false, by a strange instinct for the truth, and above all by his love for Ethel. In short, it was certainly a secret sense of the help which a clear-sighted friend, in the midst of his blind partisans, might render Schumacker.
XXXIII.
Is that the chief? His look alarms me; I dare not speak to him.—Maturin: Bertram.
ON hearing the shouts which announced the arrival of the famous hunter Kennybol, Hacket sprang forward to meet him, leaving Ordener with the two other leaders.
“Here you are at last, my dear Kennybol! Come, let me present you to your much-dreaded commander, Hans of Iceland.”
At this name, Kennybol, pale, breathless, his hair standing on end, his face bathed in perspiration, and his hands stained with blood, started back.
“Hans of Iceland!”
“Come,” said Hacket, “don’t be alarmed! He is here to help you. You must look upon him as a friend and comrade.”