Leonard started, but just then a gust of wind came down the chimney,
forming itself into a close resemblance of the slow, unvaried
laughter, by which he had been interrupted. "I was deceived,"
thought he; and thus pursued his fearful story.
"I trod out his accursed soul, and knew that he was dead; for my
spirit bounded as if a chain had fallen from it and left me free.
But the burst of exulting certainty soon fled, and was succeeded by
a torpor over my brain and a dimness before my eyes, with the
sensation of one who struggles through a dream. So I bent down over
the body of Walter Brome, gazing into his face, and striving to make
my soul glad with the thought, that he, in very truth, lay dead before
me. I know not what space of time I had thus stood, nor how the vision
came. But it seemed to me that the irrevocable years since childhood
had rolled back, and a scene, that had long been confused and broken
in my memory, arrayed itself with all its first distinctness.
Methought I stood a weeping infant by my father's hearth; by the
cold and blood-stained hearth where he lay dead.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24