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Show 206 HlC II ARlJ JIUIWIF;. John llurdis remained at the gntc n long t.irnc after J'ickctt rode away. Jlc watched his rctrcatin~ form whi le it continuC'd in sight, then scatC'd himself on the ground where he had been standillg, and unconsciously, ·with a lit tle stick, began to draw characters in the sand. 'l'o the lnbors of his fi11gcr s, his mind seemed to be utterly heedless, until, aroused to a sense of what he was doing and where he sat, by the approach of some of the field negroes returning from the labors of the day. lie started to his feet M he heard their Yo ices, but how did his guilty lJCart heart tremble, when his eye took in the letters tl1at he had un· wittingly traced upon the sand. 'l'hc word "murderer" was distinctly written in large charncters, before his eyes. ' Yith a Oespcrate, but trembling haste, as if he dreaded lest other eyes should behold it too, he clashed his feet over the letters, nor stayed his efforts even when they were perfectly obliterated. Fool that be was-of what avail was all his toil1 lie might erase the guilty letters from the sand, but tl1ey were wri tten upon his soul in characters that no l1and could reach, and no labors obliterate. 'fhe fiend was there in full possession, and his tortures were only now begun. 1'11E SPECTRI~. 207 CHAPTER XXX TJm SP ECTRE. "Let tho enrth hide thee."-SUAKJU'ERF.. TnE murderer hurried homeward when this dark conference was ended. The affair in which l1e had acted so principnl, yet secondary a part, l1ad exercised a less obv ious inHuence upon him tl1an upon the yet baser person who had egged him on to the deed. There was no such revulsion of feeling in his bosom, as in that of John llurdis. l~ndowcd with greater nerve at first, and rendered obtuse from habit and education, the nicer sensibilities-the k eener apprehensions of the mind-were not sufliciently active in him to warm at any recital, when the deed itself, which it narrated, had failed to impress him with terror or repentance. If he did not tremble to do, still less was he disposed to tremble at the bare story of his misdoings ; and l1e rode away with a due increase of' scorn for tl1c base spirit and cowardly heart of his employer. And yet, perhaps, Pickett had never beheld J olm llurdis in any situation in which his better feelings had been more prominent. rrhc weaknesses, which the one despised, were the only shows of vi rtue in the oth er. rrhc cowardly wretch, when he supposed the deed to have been done on which he had sent his unhes itating messenger- felt, for the first time, that it would not only have been wiser but better, to have borne patiently with his wrong, rather than so foully to have revengC'll it. lie felt that it woulcl have been easier to sleep under the operation of injustice than to become one's self a criminal. Bitterly indeed did this solemn truth grow upon him in the end, when sleep, at length, utterly refused to come a.t his bidding. But, though the obvious fears and compunctious visitings of |
