fellow chose to please his widowed mother. I could almost believe
(as a cloudy mantle stole in long folds over the highland, reproducing
the lights, and shades, and gloom of that mysterious day) that the
twenty years were all a dream, and that here was poor George Bowring
going to his murder and his watery grave.

My nerves are good and strong, I trow; and that much must have long been
evident. But I did not know what young Bob's might be, and therefore I
left him to himself. No man should be watched as he stands at the grave
of his wife or mother: neither should a young fellow who sits on the
spot where his father was murdered. Therefore, as soon as our Bob had
descended into the gray stone-pit, in which his dear father must have
breathed his last, I took good care to be out of sight, after observing
that he sat down exactly as his father must have sat, except that his
attitude, of course, was sad, and his face pale and reproachful. Then,
leaving the poor young fellow to his thoughts, I also sat down to
collect myself.

But before I had time to do more than wonder at the mysterious ways of
the world, or of Providence in guiding it; at the manner in which great
wrong lies hidden, and great woe falls unrecompensed; at the dark,
uncertain laws which cover (like an indiscriminate mountain cloud)
the good and the bad, the kind and the cruel, the murdered and the
murderer--a loud shriek rang through the rocky ravine, and up the dark
folds of the mountain.

I started with terror, and rushed forward, and heard myself called, and
saw young Bowring leap up, and stand erect and firm, although with a
gesture of horror. At his feet lay the body of a man struck dead, flung
on its back, with great hands spread on the eyes, and white hair over
them.

No need to ask what it meant. At last the justice of God was manifest.
The murderer lay, a rigid corpse, before the son of the murdered.

"Did you strike him?" I asked.

"Is it likely," said the youth, "that I would strike an aged man like
that? I assure you I never had such a fright in my life. This poor old
fellow came on me quite suddenly, from behind a rock, when all my mind
was full of my father; and his eyes met mine, and down he fell, as if I
had shot him through the heart!"

"You have done no less," I answered; and then I stooped over the corpse
(as I had stooped over the corpse of its victim), and the whole of my
strength was required to draw the great knotted hands from