Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/77



" now my mind had been swayed by the urgencies of this occasion: these reflections were excluded, which rushed tumultuously upon me the moment I was at leisure to receive them. Without foresight of a previous moment, an entire change had been wrought in my condition.

"I had been oppressed with a sense of the danger that flowed from the existence of this man: by what means the peril could be annihilated, and we be placed in security from his attempts, no efforts of mind could suggest. To devise these means, and employ them with success, demanded, as I conceived, the most powerful sagacity and the firmest courage. Now the danger was no more; the intelligence, in which plans of mischief might be generated, was extinguished or flown; lifeless were the hands ready to execute the dictates of that intelligence; the contriver of enormous evil was, in one moment, bereft of the power and the will to injure. Our past tranquillity had been owing to the belief of his death: fear and dismay had resumed their dominion when the mistake was discovered; but now we might regain possession of our wonted confidence— I had beheld with my own eyes the lifeless corpse of our implacable adversary:—thus, in a moment, had terminated his long and flagitious career; his restless indignation, his malignant projects, that had so long occupied the stage, and been so fertile of calamity, were now at an end!

"In the course of my meditations, the idea of the death of this man had occurred, and it bore the appearance of a desirable event; yet it was little qualified to tranquillise my fears. In the long catalogue of contingencies, this, indeed, was to be found; but it was as little likely to happen as any other; it could not happen without a series of anterior events paving the way for it; if his death came from us, it must be the result of design—it must Spring from laborious circumvention and deep-laid stratagems.

"No: he was dead—I had killed him: what had I done? I had meditated nothing; I was impelled by an