Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/178

 and absurd to have relinquished. My present reliance was placed upon these.

I now, for the first time, examined the prize that I had made: other considerations had prevented me till now from examining the structure of the piece; but I could not but observe that it had two barrels, and was lighter and smaller than an ordinary musket. The light of the fire now enabled me to inspect it with more accuracy.

Scarcely had I fixed my eyes upon the stock, when I perceived marks that were familiar to my apprehension. Shape, ornaments, and ciphers were evidently the same with those of a piece which I had frequently handled: the marks were of a kind which could not be mistaken. This piece was mine; and when I left my uncle's house it was deposited, as I believed, in the closet of my chamber.

Thou wilt easily conceive the inference which this circumstance suggested. My hairs rose, and my teeth chattered with horror—my whole frame was petrified; and I paced to and fro, hurried from the chimney to the door, and from the door to the chimney, with the misguided fury of a maniac.

I needed no proof of my calamity more incontestible than this:—my uncle and my sisters had been murdered; the dwelling had been pillaged, and this had been a part of the plunder. Defenceless and asleep, they were assailed by these inexorable enemies; and I, who ought to have been their protector and champion, was removed to an immeasurable distance, and was disabled by some accursed chance from affording them the succour which they needed.

For a time, I doubted whether I had not witnessed and shared this catastrophe: I had no memory of the circumstances that preceded my awaking in the pit. Had not the cause of my being cast into this abyss some connection with the ruin of my family? Had I not been dragged hither by these savages, and reduced by their malice to that breathless and insensible condition? Was I born to a malignant destiny never tired of persecuting? Thus had my parents and their infant offspring perished, and thus completed was the fate of all those to whom my affections cleaved, and whom the first disaster had spared.