The doctor had finished his task, and lay in a drunken sleep on the floor.  The uninjured raiders had followed his example, the candle had burned itself out and all was darkness and silence save the low, fitful sounds of suffering.

To Boyd sleep was impossible, the pain of his burns was still very great; especially in his eyes, the injury to which he feared must result in total blindness.  How could he bear it? he asked himself, to go groping his way through life in utter darkness?  Horrible! horrible! he would not endure it; they had put the means of self-destruction out of his way now, but on the first opportunity to get hold of a pistol, he would blow his own brains out and be done with this agony.  The Bible was a fable; death an eternal sleep; he had been saying it for years, till he thought his belief—­or more correctly unbelief—­firmly fixed:  but now the early teachings of a pious mother came back to him and he trembled with the fear that they might be true.

“It is appointed unto men once to die, but after that the judgment.”  “Every one of us shall give an account of himself to God.”  “These shall go away into everlasting punishment.”  “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”  Fire, fire! oh how unendurable he had found it! dare he risk its torment throughout the endless ages of eternity?  Self-destruction might be but a plunge into deeper depths of anguish:  from which there could be no return.

For days and weeks he lay in his miserable hiding place, almost untended save for the doctor’s visits, and the bringing of his meals by one or another of his confederates, who would feed him with a rough sort of kindness, then go away again, leaving him to the solitary companionship of his own bitter thoughts.

He longed for the pleasant society and gentle ministrations of his aunt, and he knew that if sent for she would come to him, and that his secret would be safe with her; but alas, how could he bear that she should know of his crime and its punishment?  She who had so earnestly besought him to forsake his evil ways and live in peace and love with all men:  she who had warned him again and again that “the way of transgressors is hard,” and that “though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished.”  She who had loved, cared for, and watched over him with almost a mother’s undying, unalterable tenderness and devotion.

How ungrateful she would deem his repeated attempt against the home and husband of one whom she loved as her own child.  She would not reprove him, she would not betray him, but he would know that in her secret heart she condemned him as a guilty wretch, a disgrace to her and all his relatives; and that would be worse, far worse to his proud spirit than the dreary loneliness of his present condition, and the lack of the bodily comforts she would provide.

No, he would bear his bitter fate as best he might, and though he had proved the truth of her warning words, she should never know it, if he could keep it from her.