“How I dread the storm!  It tells me there is a God! that the thunder is his voice, and the fierce wind but the motion of his breath!  And the lightning! oh, the lightning! how it looks into the heart and exposes all its secrets to the eye of Deity!  What a flash was that!  Come! to the cave! to the cave!”

With the concluding words his quiet ceased, and he struggled as if exerting himself to do something very hastily.  A moment more and a short, frightened cry, escaped his lips, and he sunk back, as if dead.  It was plain that he was re-living and re-enacting the day, and its scenes; and in this condition he remained for some time; then his insanity took a wilder and wider range, recalling the past, and exposing the future of his life and designs.  He raved and cajoled, commanded and persuaded by times; was now quiet, and, anon, in a fever of excitement, or rage.  After one of his quiet moods, he slowly aroused and addressed himself in this manner: 

“That oath! it was a great mistake, this worst blunder I have made.  In spite of myself it will haunt me.  And the curse! that awful curse!  Gods! will it never cease ringing in my ears! night and day, sleeping and waking it never leaves me!  I see her now!  How weird-like her prophetic looks!  How like the sentence of doom are her words, as, with flashing eye and quivering lip, she says:  ’As you have wilfully, voluntarily, and wickedly called it down upon your own head, may the curse of God rest upon you in this world and the world to come.’  Gods and demons! if their should be ’a world to come!’—­How her words burn into my heart! and, worst of all, they are proving a reality!  I am accused! my ‘plans of villainy’ do fail, and I am a ‘vagabond upon the face of the earth!’ But I’ll not endure it longer!  I’ll shake myself from these haunting fears! aye, and I’ll prove them false!  I’ll do it if all the curses of the universe rise up before me!  Avaunt, ye specters!  I’ll be a man despite your efforts to frighten me by your grim presence!”

Again, in another strain, he broke forth with this development of his inward thoughts.

“Heigh, ho!  I am on the track now, and nothing can save her!  Oh, but I’ll be sweetly revenged!  I’ll teach the proud minx to insult a Durant!  Won’t she be humbled, though! ha! ha! ha!  How she will struggle and beg for mercy!  But will I pity her?  Yes, ‘as the wolf the lamb!’ Oh, if I but possessed her now!”

And again: 

“Proud as ever!  Never mind, I’ll bring her down!  I’ll wreathe that lofty brow with shame!  I’ll strike her through her lover!  To save him at the stake she’ll yield!  I’ll revel in her charms, and then—­then what?  Ha! ha!  As a reward for her condescensions, I’ll burn him alive!  Ha! ha!  Fool, she’ll be to think I’d let a rival live, when her heart was his!” * * *

“How pale she is! the charm works! she’ll bend to my will at last. * * Not yet?  Look at his agony, have you the heart to see him suffer so?  Ah, how dearly you must love him, to stand by and see him burn to ashes when a word from your lips would rescue him from the flames!” * * * * * * * *