I Saw That Face, So Situated, Every Night For A Long Time Afterward; And
I Believed Myself As Guilty Of The Man's Death As If I Had Given Him The
Matches Purposely That He Might Burn Himself Up With Them.
I had not a
doubt that I should be hanged if my connection with this tragedy were
found out.
The happenings and the impressions of that time are burnt
into my memory, and the study of them entertains me as much now as they
themselves distressed me then. If anybody spoke of that grisly matter, I
was all ears in a moment, and alert to hear what might be said, for I
was always dreading and expecting to find out that I was suspected; and
so fine and so delicate was the perception of my guilty conscience, that
it often detected suspicion in the most purposeless remarks, and in
looks, gestures, glances of the eye which had no significance, but which
sent me shivering away in a panic of fright, just the same. And how sick
it made me when somebody dropped, howsoever carelessly and barren of
intent, the remark that 'murder will out!' For a boy of ten years, I was
carrying a pretty weighty cargo.
All this time I was blessedly forgetting one thing - the fact that I was
an inveterate talker in my sleep. But one night I awoke and found my
bed-mate - my younger brother - sitting up in bed and contemplating me by
the light of the moon.
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