Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/112

 No topic, therefore, could be properly employed by me on the present occasion: all that I could do was to offer him food, and, by pathetic supplications, to prevail on him to eat; famine, however obstinate, would scarcely refrain when bread was placed within sight and reach. When made to swerve from his resolution in one instance, it would be less difficult to conquer it a second time: the magic of sympathy, the perseverance of benevolence, though silent, might work a gradual and secret revolution, and better thoughts might insensibly displace those desperate suggestions which now governed him.

Having revolved these ideas, I placed the food which I had brought at his right hand, and seating myself at his feet, attentively surveyed his countenance. The emotions which were visible during wakefulness had vanished during this cessation of remembrance and remorse, or were faintly discernible: they served to dignify and solemnise his features, and to embellish those immutable lines which betokened the spirit of his better days: lineaments were now observed which could never co-exist with folly, or associate with obdurate guilt.

I had no inclination to awaken him; this respite was too sweet to be needlessly abridged: I determined to await the operation of nature, and to prolong, by silence, and by keeping interruption at a distance, this salutary period of forgetfulness. This interval permitted new ideas to succeed in my mind.

Clithero believed his solitude to be unapproachable: what new expedients to escape enquiry and enstruction might not my presence suggest! Might he not vanish, as he had done on the former day, and afford me no time to assail his constancy, and tempt his hunger? If, however, I withdrew during his sleep, he would awake without disturbance, and be unconscious, for a time, that his secrecy had been violated; he would quickly perceive the victuals, and would need no foreign inducements to eat: a provision so unexpected and extraordinary might suggest new thoughts, and be construed into a kind of heavenly condemnation of his purpose. He would not readily suspect the motives or person of his visitant—would take no precaution against the