University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.

Luckily the ball did not enter directly the breast
of Henry, but tended upwards—otherwise it would
have killed him on the spot. It entered the left
breast, above the heart, and passed within an inch
or two of it. The patient did not suffer much pain
at first, but the excited state of his system threw him
into an alarming fever, during which he raved incoherently
of Helen Murray—alternately imploring
her regard, and imprecating her neglect—but generally
speaking of her in the bitterest language. Sometimes
he raved against Ralph and Ruth; and often
against the girl with the vilest epithets. Stansbury
was very attentive to him, and did much to relieve
his mother, who watched by his bedside constantly.

The girl had been taken into custody the night of
the misdeed, and was confined in jail to await her
trial at the sitting of the court, if Henry should then
be well enough to appear as a witness against her.
Henry recovered very slowly; and, on hearing that
she was in jail, though he felt deeply revengeful
towards her, yet fearful of the exposure of his treatment
of her, which would take place on her trial,
he was extremely anxious that the affair should be
hushed up. The public prints had already been filled
with exaggerated accounts of the transaction, in

which his name had been introduced in no very flattering
manner. During his long convalescence his
mind had dwelt upon the subject, until he had become
morbidly alive to the shame and degradation which
he thought must attach to his character. At last,
he never thought of Helen Murray, Ruth, or Ralph,
but an imprecation rose to his lips; and a desire of
revenge, particularly on the former, burned in his
heart: for he held her the chief cause of all the evil
that had befallen him.

The attorney for the commonwealth was determined
to present the case to the grand jury; and
Henry discovered there was no other way for him
to prevent the trial than by absenting himself; for
he was aware if he did not appear against the girl
she could not be tried. As he grew stronger the
determination was fixed in his mind not to appear
against her; not, as we have said, on her account,
but on his own. He therefore resolved, as the time
was fast approaching when the criminal court would
sit, and of course a grand jury be summoned, to quit
the city. The odium which had already attached
to his conduct would have induced him to do this,
while the fear of the exposure of a trial, in which he
was aware he would be sternly crossed-examined
as a witness, and his conduct commented on by the
counsel for the accused in most censurable terms,
he felt was more than he could brook, if it were possible
to avoid it. Added to this, all his previous
recklessness and dissipation—which the world at

first were disposed to look over as much as possible,
for his father's sake—were now dwelt upon, and
even hinted at in the public prints in a tone of censure
stronger than the apologies had been previously
indulgent. Besides, he had represented the case to
his father in a way so as to reflect the least possible
blame on himself; and he knew well the testimony
on the stand would not sustain this representation,
which he himself there would be compelled to make
more compatible with facts—as other witnesses
would appear, whom he could not contradict without
involving fearfully the question of his own
veracity.

Henry's father, who was deeply wounded by
the event; had made it his earnest request to the
State's attorney that the matter should be dropped—
and he had stated to him his son's account of the
transaction: to which the attorney replied, that if
the woman had acted so outrageously as Henry
represented, the necessity for her punishment was
increased. Henry was not a little startled when his
father repeated the prosecuting attorney's remark
to him; but, after a moment of embarrassment, he
replied, that he could not see a woman who had
stood to him in the relation of the girl punished, and
sooner than she should be he would quit the city.

His father remained silent, but it was apparent he
wished his son to do so; and Henry, in the course
of conversation, asked him to which portion of the
country he had better go. His father replied, to

the west, and that, perhaps, he might find it to his
advantage permanently to settle there—saying he
could give him letters of introduction to almost any
portion of it—as he was himself extensively acquainted
in the west and south-west.

Henry, when he had resolved on leaving the city,
had an indefinable wish to wend westward, for he
entertained a vague hope, by so doing, that he could
be revenged in some way on Ralph and Ruth; and he
was a living proof of the truth of the old maxim—
“that those whom we have injured we hate.”

Affecting to be entirely guided by his father's
advice, he accordingly departed westward, intending
to descend the Ohio and the Mississippi, and
stop on his way down at Perryville.