Lester, eager to hear what his guest could relate,
therefore took Aram to his own apartment, where the
particulars were briefly told.
Suspecting, which indeed was the chief reason that
excused him to himself in yielding to Madeline’s
request, that the men Lester and himself had encountered
in their evening walk, might be other than they seemed,
and that they might have well overheard Lester’s
communication, as to the sum in his house, and the
place where it was stored; he had not undressed himself,
but kept the door of his room open to listen if any
thing stirred. The keen sense of hearing, which
we have before remarked him to possess, enabled him
to catch the sound of the file at the bars, even before
Ellinor, notwithstanding the distance of his own chamber
from the place, and seizing the sword which had been
left in his room, (the pistol was his own) he had
descended to the room below.
“What!” said Lester, “and without
a light?”
“The darkness is familiar to me,” said
Aram. “I could walk by the edge of a precipice
in the darkest night without one false step, if I had
but once passed it before. I did not gain the
room, however, till the window had been forced; and
by the light of a dark lantern which one of them held,
I perceived two men standing by the bureau—the
rest you can imagine; my victory was easy, for the
bludgeon, with which one of them aimed at me, gave
way at once to the edge of your good sword, and my
pistol delivered me of the other.—There
ends the history.”
Lester overwhelmed him with thanks and praises, but
Aram, glad to escape them, hurried away to see after
Madeline, whom he now met on the landing-place, leaning
on Ellinor’s arm and still pale.
She gave him her hand, which he for one moment pressed
passionately to his lips, but dropped, the next, with
an altered and chilled air. And hastily observing
he would not now detain her from a rest which she must
so much require, he turned away and descended the stairs.
Some of the servants were grouped around the place
of encounter; he entered the room, and again started
at the sight of the blood.
“Bring water,” said he fiercely:
“will you let the stagnant gore ooze and rot
into the boards, to startle the eye, and still the
heart with its filthy, and unutterable stain—water,
I say! water!”
They hurried to obey him, and Lester coming into the
room to see the window reclosed by the help of boards
found the Student bending over the servants as they
performed their reluctant task, and rating them with
a raised and harsh voice for the hastiness with which
he accused them of seeking to slur it over.
Aram alone among
the mountains.—His soliloquy
and project.—
Scene between himself and Madeline.
Luce
non grata fruor;
Trepidante semper corde, non mortis
metu
Sed—
—Seneca:
Octavia, act i.
