“She is risen!” he exclaimed—­“the spectre of all my crimes is risen to haunt me through life!  I am a murderer—­yet she lives, and my guilt is not the less!  The stamp of eternal infamy is upon me—­the finger of scorn will mark me out—­the tongue of reproach will sting me like that of the serpent—­the deadly touch of shame will cover me like a leper—­the laws of society will crush the murderer, not the less that his wickedness in blood has miscarried:  after that comes the black and terrible tribunal of the Almighty’s vengeance—­of His fiery indignation!  Hush!—­What sounds are those?  They deepen—­they deepen!  Is it thunder?  It cannot be the crackling of the blaze!  It is thunder!—­but it speaks only to my ear!  Hush!—­Great God, there is a change in my voice!  It is hollow and supernatural!  Could a change have come over me?  Am I living?  Could I have—­Hah!—­Could I have departed? and am I now at length given over to the worm that never dies?  If it be at my heart, I may feel it.  God!—­I am damned!  Here is a viper twined about my limbs, trying to dart its fangs into my heart!  Hah!—­there are feet pacing in the room, too, and I hear voices!  I am surrounded by evil spirits!  Who’s there?—­What are you?—­Speak!—­They are silent!—­There is no answer!  Again comes the thunder!  But perchance this is not my place of punishment, and I will try to leave these horrible spirits!”

He opened the door, and passed out into a small green field that lay behind the house.  The night was calm, and the silence profound as death.  Not a cloud obscured the heavens;—­the light of the moon fell upon the stillness of the scene around him, with all the touching beauty of a moonlit midnight in summer.  Here he paused a moment, felt his brow, then his heart, the palpitations of which fell audibly upon his ear.  He became somewhat cooler; the images of madness which had swept through his stormy brain disappeared, and were succeeded by a lethargic vacancy of thought, which almost deprived him of the consciousness of his own identity.  From the green field he descended mechanically to a little glen which opened beside it.  It was one of those delightful spots to which the heart clingeth.  Its sloping sides were clothed with patches of wood, on the leaves of which the moonlight glanced with a soft lustre, rendered more beautiful by their stillness.  That side on which the light could not fall, lay in deep shadow, which occasionally gave to the rocks and small projecting precipices an appearance of monstrous and unnatural life.  Having passed through the tangled mazes of the glen, he at length reached its bottom, along which ran a brook, such as, in the description of the poet,—­

    “In the leafy month of June,
    Unto the sleeping woods all night,
    Singeth a quiet tune.”