and manifold, that the jury, without retiring, found him guilty.  He was executed on the common, and his body hung in chains.  Then it was that I first felt I was indeed a murderer—­then it was that the molten sulphur of remorse was poured into my bosom, rushing, spreading, burning, and devouring; but it changed not the bronze with which hardship had masked my cheek, nor the steel to which danger had tempered my nerves.

I obeyed the Colonel’s orders as unmoved as if nothing had happened.  I did my duty with habitual precision,—­my hand was steady, my limbs were firm; but my tongue was incapable of uttering a word.  My comrades as they came towards me, suddenly halted, and turned aside,—­strangers looked at me, as if I bore the impress of some fearful thing.  I was removed, as it were, out of myself—­I was in another state of being—­I was in hell.

Next morning we had a skirmish, in which I received this wound in the knee; and soon afterwards, with other invalids, I was ordered home.  We were landed at Portsmouth, and I proceeded to my native village.  But in this I had no will nor choice; a chain was around me, which I could not resist, drawing me on.  Often did I pause and turn, wishing to change my route; but Fate held me fast, and I was enchanted by the spell of many an old and dear recollection, to revisit those things which had lost all their innocence and holiness to me.

The day had been sultry, the sun set with a drowsy eye, and the evening air was moist, warm, and oppressive.  It weighed heavily alike on mind and body.  I was crippled by my wound,—­the journey was longer than my strength could sustain much further,—­still I resolved to persevere, for I longed to be again in my father’s house; and I fancied were I once there, that the burning in my bosom would abate.

During my absence in India, the new road across the common had been opened.  By the time I reached it, the night was closed in,—­a dull, starless, breezeless, dumb, sluggish, and unwholesome night; and those things which still retained in their shapes some blackness, deeper than the darkness, seemed, as I slowly passed by, to be endowed with mysterious intelligence, with which my spirit would have held communion but for dread.

While I was frozen with the influence of this dreadful phantasy, I saw a pale, glimmering, ineffectual light rising before me.  It was neither lamp, fire, nor candle; and though like, it was not yet flame.  I took it at first for the lustre of a reflection from some unseen light, and I walked towards it, in the hope of finding a cottage or an alehouse, where I might obtain some refreshment and a little rest.  I advanced,—­its form enlarged, but its beam became no brighter; and the horror, which had for a moment left me when it was first discovered, returned with overwhelming power.  I rushed forward, but soon halted,—­for I saw that it hung in the air, and as I approached, that it began to take a ghastly and spectral form!  I discerned the lineaments