Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/226

 visited, which I had not entered during the last year, with whose inhabitants I maintained no cordial intercourse, and to whom my occupations and amusements, my joys and my sorrows, were unknown—was no object even of conjecture: but they were not possessed by any of the family; some stranger was here, by whom they had been stolen, or into whose possession they had, by some incomprehensible chance, fallen.

That stranger was near; he had left this apartment for a moment—he would speedily return. To go hence might possibly occasion me to miss him: here, then, I would wait till he should grant me an interview. The papers were mine, and were recovered: I would never part with them; but to know by whose force, or by whose stratagems, I had been bereaved of them thus long, was now the supreme passion of my soul. I seated myself near a table, and anxiously awaited for an interview, on which I was irresistibly persuaded to believe that much of my happiness depended.

Meanwhile, I could not but connect this incident with the destruction of my family. The loss of these papers had excited transports of grief; and yet to have lost them thus was, perhaps, the sole expedient by which their final preservation could be rendered possible: had they remained in my cabinet, they could not have escaped the destiny which overtook the house and its furniture. Savages are not accustomed to leave their exterminating work unfinished. The house which they have plundered, they are careful to level with the ground: this, not only their revenge, but their caution, prescribes. Fire may originate by accident as well as by design, and the traces of pillage and murder are totally obliterated by the flames.

These thoughts were interrupted by the shutting of a door below, and by footsteps ascending the stairs. My heart throbbed at the sound—my seat became uneasy, and I started on my feet; I even advanced halfway to the entrance of the room: my eyes were intensely fixed upon the door. My impatience would have made me guess at the person of this visitant by measuring his shadow, if his shadow were first seen; but this was precluded by the