University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

The murderer hurried homewards when this dark
conference was ended. The affair in which he had
acted so principal, yet secondary a part, had exercised
a less obvious influence upon him than upon
the yet baser person who had egged him on to the
deed. There was no such revulsion of feeling in
his bosom, as in that of John Hurdis. Endowed with
greater nerve at first, and rendered obtuse from habit
and education, the nicer sensibilities—the keener
apprehensions of the mind—were not sufficiently
active in him to warm at any recital, when the deed
itself, which it narrated, had failed to impress him
with terror or repentance. If he did not tremble to
do, still less was he disposed to tremble at the bare
story of his misdoings; and he rode away with a
due increase of scorn for the base spirit and cowardly
heart of his employer. And yet, perhaps,
Pickett had never beheld John Hurdis in any situation
in which his better feelings had been more

prominent. The weaknesses, which the one despised,
were the only shows of virtue in the other. The
cowardly wretch, when he supposed the deed to have
been done on which he had sent his unhesitating
messenger—felt, for the first time, that it would not
only have been wiser but better, to have borne patiently
with his wrong, rather than so foully to have
revenged it. He felt that it would have been easier
to sleep under the operation of injustice than to become
one's self a criminal. Bitterly indeed did this
solemn truth grow upon him in the end, when sleep,
at length, utterly refused to come at his bidding.

But, though the obvious fears and compunctious
visitings of his employer had provoked the scorn of
the murderer, it was decreed that he himself should
not be altogether free from similar weaknesses.
They developed themselves before he reached his
home. It was nearly dusk when he entered the
narrow by-road which led to his habitation—night
was fast coming on, yet the twilight was sufficiently
clear to enable him to distinguish objects. Without
a thought, perhaps, of the crime of which he had been
guilty; or rather, without a regretful thought, he
pursued his way until the road opened upon his
dwelling. The habitation of his wife and child stood
before him. He could now see the smoke rising
from the leaning clay chimney, and his heart rose
with the prospect—for the very basest of mankind

have hearts for their homes—but, all on a sudden, he
jerked his bridle with a violence that whirled the
animal out from his path; and then his grasp became
relaxed. He had strength for no more—he had
neither power to advance nor fly. In an instant,
the avenues to all his fears were in possession of a
governing instinct. Guilt and terror spoke in all
his features. His glazed eyes seemed starting from
their sockets—his jaws relaxed—his mouth opened
—his hair started up and the cold dews gathered at
its roots! What sees he?—what is in his path to
make him fear? Why does the bold ruffian, ready
at all times to stab or shoot—why does he lift no
weapon now? He is sinewless, aimless, strengthless.
There rose before him, even at the gate of his
hovel, a fearful image of the man he supposed himself
to have murdered. It stood between him and
the narrow gateway so that he could not go forward
in his progress. The gaze of the spectre was
earnestly bent upon him with such a freezing glance
of death and doom as the victim might well be supposed
to wear in confronting his murderer. The
bloody hole in his bosom was awfully distinct to the
eyes of the now trembling criminal, who could see
little or nothing else. His knees knocked together
convulsively—his wiry hair lifted the cap upon his
brow.—Cold as the mildewed marble, yet shivering
like an autumn branch waving in the sudden winds,
he was frozen to the spot where it encountered him
—he could neither speak nor move. Vainly did he
attempt to lift the weapon in his grasp—his arms
were stiffened to his side—his will was not powerful
enough to compel its natural agents to their duty.
He strove to thrust the rowel into his horse's flanks,
but even to this effort he found himself unequal.
Twice did he strive to cry aloud to the threatening
aspect before him, in words of entreaty or defiance,
but his tongue refused its office. The words froze
in his throat, and it was only able in a third and
desperate effort to articulate words which denoted
idiocy rather than resolve.

“Stand aside, Richard Hurdis—stand aside, or
I'll run over you. You would tie me to the tree
—you would try hickories upon me, would you?
Go—go to John Hurdis now, and he'll tell you, I'm
not afraid of you. No—d—n my eyes if I am,
though he is! I'm not afraid of your bloody finger
—shake it away—shake it away. There's a hole
in your jacket wants mending, man—you'd better
see to it 'fore it gets worse. I see the red stuff
coming out of it now. Go—stand off or I'll hurt
you—ptsho—ptsho—ptsho.”

And, as he uttered this wandering and incoherent
language, his limbs strengthened sufficiently to enable
him, with one hand, to employ the action of a
person hallooing hogs out of his enclosure. The

sound of his own voice seemed to unfix the spell
upon him. The ghostly figure sank down before
his mazed eyes and advancing footsteps, in a heap,
like one suddenly slain, and as he had seen his
victim fall. It lay directly before him—he pressed
his horse upon it, but it disappeared before he
reached the spot. A brief space yet lay between
the gate and the hovel, and, passing through the
former, he was about to plunge, with a like speed
towards the latter, when another figure, and one, too,
much more terrific to the fears of the ruffian than
the first—took its place, and the person of William
Carrington emerged at that moment from the dwelling
itself, and stood before him in the doorway.
If Pickett trembled before under his superstitious
imaginings, he trembled now with apprehensions of
a more human description. It was the vulgar fear
of the fugitive that possessed him now. He felt
that he was pursued. He saw before him the friend
of the man he had murdered, speeding in hot haste
to wreak vengeance on his murderer. In the dread
of cord or shot, he lost, in a single instant, all his
former and paralysing terror arising from the blighting
visitation of the world of spirits. He was no
longer frozen by fear. He was strengthened and
stimulated for flight by the appearance of Carrington.
He turned the head of his horse, and with the movement,
the avenger advanced upon him. He felt that
there was no escape. There was no hope in flight.
In desperation, he threw himself from the animal—
lifted his rifle, and, in taking deadly aim upon the
figure, was surprised to see it move away with rapid
footsteps and sink into the neighbouring woods, in
the shadow of which it was soon lost from sight.
The conduct of Carrington was more mysterious to
the criminal than was the appearance of the spectre
just before. If he came as the avenger of his friend,
how strange that he should fly! And how could
such timidity be believed of one so notoriously brave
as the man in question? The wonder grew in his
mind the more he reviewed it, and he found it easier
to continue in his wonderment, than to seek by any
reference to his past experience and present thoughts
for any solution of the mystery.

Pale and cold with fright he at last entered his
hovel without farther interruption. The anxious
and searching eyes of his wife beheld in an instant
the disordered emotion so prominent in his; and her
fears were renewed.

“What is it Ben—what disturbs you? Why do
you look around so?” she demanded.

“How long has he been here?—when did he
come?—what does he want?” were the rapid questions
which the criminal uttered in reply.

“Who?—who has been here? of whom do you
ask?” was the response of the astonished wife.

“Why, Bill Carrington, to be sure—Who else?
I saw him come out of the door just this minute and
take to the woods. What did he want?—where's
he gone? Who's he looking for? eh!”

“Your're sick, Ben,” said the wife—“your head's
disordered. You'd better lie down.”

“Can't you answer me a plain question?” was his
peremptory answer to her suggestion—“I ask you
what Bill Carrington wanted with me or with
you?”

“He?—nothing that I know of. He hasn't been
here, Ben.”

“The devil you say? Better tell me I'm drunk
—when I saw him, with my own eyes, come out
just a moment ago and take to the woods!”

“You may have seen him in the woods, but I'm
sure you didn't see him come out of this house.
I've been in this room for the last hour—never once
out of it—and nobody but myself and Jane in it—
and nobody's been here that either of us has seen.”

The man turned to Jane, and reading in her
eyes a confirmation of her mother's speech, he
looked vacantly around him for a few moments,
then lifting his rifle, which he had leaned up within
the entrance, rushed out of the house, and hurried
to the woods in search of the person whom he had
seen disappear there. He was gone for an hour
when he returned exhausted. In that time his

search had been close and thorough for a circuit of
several miles, in all those recesses which he had
been accustomed to regard as hiding places, and
which, it may be added, he had repeatedly used as
such. The exhaustion that followed his disappointment
was an exhaustion of mind rather than of body.
The vagueness and mystery which attended all these
incidents had utterly confounded him, and when he
returned to the presence of his wife, he almost
seemed to lack the facilities of speech and hearing.
He spoke but little, and, observing his fatigue, and
probably ascribing his strange conduct to a sudden
excess in drink, his wife prudently forebore all unnecessary
remarks and questions. Night hurried on
—darkness had covered the face of the earth, and in
silence the wife and idiot child of the criminal had
commenced their evening meal, Pickett keeping his
place at the fireside without heeding the call to supper.
A stupor weighed down all his faculties, and
he almost seemed to sleep, but a slight tap at the
entrance—a single tap, gentle as if made by a woman-hand
soliciting admission—awakened, in an
instant, all the guilty consciousness that could not
sleep in the bosom of the criminal. He started to
his feet in terror. The keen and searching glance
of his wife was fixed upon his face, and heedful of
every movement of his person. She said nothing,
but her looks were so full of inquiry that it needed
no words to make Pickett aware that her soul was
alarmed and apprehensive. She looked as if feeling
that all her previous fears were realised. The
knock at the entrance was repeated.

“Shall I open it, Ben?” was her question, and
her eyes motioned him to a window in the rear.
But he did not heed the obvious suggestion. Gathering
courage as he beheld her glance, and saw her
suspicions, he crossed the floor to the entrance,
boldly lifted the bar which secured it, and, in firm
tones, bade the unknown visiter “come in.”