ause he would have been killed if I had left him over yonder. They
were firing guns and shedding blood. Does the sight of blood turn you
sick, father? I see it does, by your face. That's like me--What are you
looking at?'

'At nothing!' said the murderer softly, as he started back a pace or
two, and gazed with sunken jaw and staring eyes above his son's head.
'At nothing!'

He remained in the same attitude and with the same expression on his
face for a minute or more; then glanced slowly round as if he had lost
something; and went shivering back, towards the shed.

'Shall I bring him in, father?' asked Barnaby, who had looked on,
wondering.

He only answered with a suppressed groan, and lying down upon the
ground, wrapped his cloak about his head, and shrunk into the darkest
corner.

Finding that nothing would rouse Hugh now, or make him sensible for a
moment, Barnaby dragged him along the grass, and laid him on a little
heap of refuse hay and straw which had been his own bed; first having
brought some water from a running stream hard by, and washed his wound,
and laved his hands and face. Then he lay down himself, between the two,
to pass the night; and looking at the stars, fell fast asleep.

Awakened early in the morning, by the sunshine and the songs of birds,
and hum of insects, he left them sleeping in the hut, and walked into
the sweet and pleasant air. But he felt that on his jaded senses,
oppressed and burdened with the dreadful scenes of last night, and many
nights before, all the beauties of opening day, which he had so often
tasted, and in which he had had such deep delight, fell heavily. He
thought of the blithe mornings when he and the dogs went bounding on
together through the woods and fields; and the recollection filled his
eyes with tears. He had no consciousness, God help him, of having done
wrong, nor had he any new perception of the merits of the cause in which
he had been engaged, or those of the men who advocated it; but he was
full of cares now, and regrets, and dismal recollections, and wishes
(quite unknown to him before) that this or that event had never
happened, and that the sorrow and suffering of so many people had been
spared. And now he began to think how happy they would be--his father,
mother, he, and Hugh--if they rambled away together, and lived in some
lonely place, where there were none of these troubles; and that perhaps
the blind man, who had talked so wisely about gold, a