ld never for a single hour shake himself free
from the recollection of his father's death; whenever he shut his
eyes, his uneasy mind continually conjured up the whole scene with
uncanny distinctness; the gloomy room, the contorted face of the dying
man, the red flicker of the firelight on the wall--all these things
were burnt deep into the tablets of his memory. More and more did he
recognize the fact that, even should he live long enough to bury the
events of that hour beneath the debris of many years, the lapse of
time would be insufficient to bring forgetfulness, and the recognition
brought with it moral helplessness. He had, too, sufficient religious
feeling to make him uneasy as to his future fate, and possessed a
certain amount of imagination, which was at this time all directed
towards that awful day when he and his dead father must settle their
final accounts. Already, in the quiet nights, he would wake with a
start, thinking that the inevitable time had come. Superstitious fears
also would seize him with their clammy fingers, and he would shake and
tremble at the fancied step of ghostly feet, and his blood would
curdle in his veins as his mind hearkened to voices that were for ever
still.

And, worst of all, what had been done, and could never be undone, had
been done in vain. These deadly torments must be endured, whilst the
object for which they had been incurred had utterly escaped him. He
had sold himself to the powers of evil for a price, and that price had
not been paid. But the bond was good for all that.

And so he would brood, hour after hour, till he felt himself drawing
near to madness. Sometimes by a strong effort he would succeed in
tearing his mind away from the subject, but then its place was
instantly filled by a proud form with reproachful eyes, and he would
feel that there, too, death had put it out of his power to make
atonement. Of those whom he had wronged Maria Lee alone survived, and
she had left him in sorrow, more bitter than any anger. Truly, Philip
Caresfoot was in melancholy case. Somewhere he had read that the wages
of sin is death, but surely what he felt surpassed the bitterness of
death. His evil-doing had not prospered with him. The snare he had set
for his father had fallen back upon himself, and he was a crushed and
ruined man.

It affords a curious insight into his character to reflect that all
these piled-up calamities, all this wreck and sudden death, did not
bring him