uilty pocket! Good heavens! there was
something still there. He pulled it out; it was a sovereign. Then he
was a thief, even actually. Oh, everything was against him; and
starting to his feet, he flung the accursed gold over the rocks far into
the sea.

When he got home, he felt so inconceivably wretched, that, unable to
work, he begged leave to go to bed at once. It was long before he fell
asleep; but when he did, the sleep was more terrible than the haunted
wakefulness. For he had no rest from tormenting and horrid dreams.
Brigson and Billy, their bodies grown to gigantic proportions, and their
faces fierce with demoniacal wickedness, seemed to be standing over him,
and demanding five pounds on pain of death. Flights of pigeons,
darkening the air, settled on him, and flapped about him. He fled from
them madly through the dark midnight, but many steps pursued him. He
saw Mr Rose, and running up, seized him by the hand, and implored
protection. But in his dream Mr Rose turned from him with a cold look
of sorrowful reproach. And then he saw Wildney, and cried out to him,
"O Charlie, do speak to me!" but Charlie ran away, saying, "_You_, Eric!
what? _you_ a thief!" and then a chorus of voices took up that awful
cry--voices of expostulation, voices of contempt, voices of indignation,
voices of menace; they took up the cry, and repeated and re-echoed it;
but most unendurable of all, there were voices of wailing and voices of
gentleness among them, and his soul died within him as he caught, amid
the confusion of condemning sounds, the voices of Russell and Vernon,
and they, too, were saying to him, in tender pity and agonised
astonishment, "Eric, Eric, you are a thief!"

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.

For alas! alas! with me
The light of life is o'er;
No more--no more--no more!
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!
_Edgar Poe_.

The landlord of "The Jolly Herring" had observed, during his visits to
Eric, that at mid-day the studies were usually deserted, and the doors
for the most part left unlocked. He very soon determined to make use of
this knowledge for his own purposes, and, as he was well acquainted with
the building (in which for a short time he had been a servant), he laid
his plans without the least dread of discovery.

There was a back entrance into Roslyn Sch