Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/85

 with which my hands were stained had flowed from the wounds of her brother.

"My mind was inaccessible to such considerations; they did not even modify my predominant idea: obstacles like these, had they existed, would have been trampled under foot.

"Leaving the lamp that I bore, on the table, I approached the bed: I slowly drew aside the curtain, and beheld her tranquilly slumbering. I listened, but so profound was her sleep, that not even her breathings could be overheard. I dropped the curtain and retired.

"How blissful and mild were the illuminations of my bosom at this discovery! A joy that surpassed all utterance succeeded the fierceness of desperation: I stood for some moments wrapt in delightful contemplation. Alas! it was a luminous, but transient interval! The madness, to whose black suggestions it bore so strong a contrast, began now to make sensible approaches on my understanding.

True,' said I, 'she lives; her slumber is serene and happy; she is blind to her approaching destiny; some hours will at least be rescued from anguish and death. Then she wakes, the phantom that soothed her will vanish: the tidings cannot be withheld from her—the murderer of thy brother cannot hope to enjoy thy smiles: those ravishing accents with which thou hast used to greet me, will be changed—scowling and reproaches, the invectives of thy anger and the maledictions of thy justice, will rest upon my head.

What is the blessing which I made the theme of my boastful arrogance? This interval of being and repose is momentary: she will awake but only to perish at the spectacle of my ingratitude—she will awake only to the consciousness of instantly impending death. When she again sleeps she will wake no more. I her son—I, whom the law of my birth doomed to poverty and hardship, but whom her unsolicited beneficence snatched from those evils, and endowed with the highest good known to intelligent beings—the consolations of science and the blandishments of affluence; to whom the darling of her life, the offspring in whom are faithfully preserved the lineaments of its