Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/45

 of mortals; yet it is but beginning: my present path, full as it is of asperities, is better than that into which I must enter when this is abandoned. Perhaps if my pilgrimage had been longer, I might at some future day have lighted upon hope; in consequence of your interference, I am for ever debarred from it: my existence is henceforward to be invariable; the woes that are reserved for me are incapable alike of alleviation or intermission.

"But I came not hither to recriminate—I came not hither to accuse others, but myself. I know the retribution that is appointed for guilt like mine: it is just. I may shudder at the foresight of my punishment, and shrink in the endurance of it; but I shall be indebted for part of my torment to the vigour of my understanding, which teaches me that my punishment is just. Why should I procrastinate my doom, and strive to render my burden more light? It is but just that it should crush me. Its procrastination is impossible; the stroke is already felt—even now I drink of the cup of retribution: a change of being cannot aggravate my woe; till consciousness itself be extinct, the worm that gnaws me will never perish.

"Fain would I be relieved from this task; gladly would I bury in oblivion the transactions of my life: but no. My fate is uniform: the demon that controlled me at first is still in the fruition of power; I am entangled in his fold, and every effort that I make to escape only involves me in deeper ruin. I need not conceal, for all the consequences of disclosure are already experienced: I cannot endure a groundless imputation, though to free me from it I must create and justify imputations still more atrocious. My story may at least be brief: if the agonies of remembrance must be awakened afresh, let me do all that in me lies to shorten them.

"I was born in the county of Armagh. My parents were of the better sort of peasants, and were able to provide me with the rudiments of knowledge. I should doubtless have trodden in their footsteps, and have spent my life in the cultivation of their scanty fields, if an event had not happened, which, for a long time, I regarded as the most fortunate of my life; but which I now consider as the scheme