won: the first is through
your death;--nay, start not, nor put your hand on your pistol; you have
not now cause to fear me. Had I chosen that method of escape, I could
have effected it long since: When, months ago, you slept under my
roof--ay, slept--what should have hindered me from stabbing you during
the slumber? Two nights since, when my blood was up, and the fury upon
me, what should have prevented me tightening the grasp that you so
resent, and laying you breathless at my feet? Nay, now, though you keep
your eye fixed on my motions, and your hand upon your weapon, you would
be no match for a desperate and resolved man, who might as well perish
in conflict with you, as by the protracted accomplishment of
your threats. Your ball might fail--(even now I see your hand
trembles)--mine, if I so will it, is certain death. No, Houseman, it
would be as vain for your eye to scan the dark pool into whose breast
you cataract casts its waters, as for your intellect to pierce the
depths of my mind and motives. Your murder, though in self-defence,
would lay a weight upon my soul, which would sink it for ever: I should
see, in your death, new chances of detection spread themselves before
me: the terrors of the dead are not to be bought or awed into silence;
I should pass from one peril into another; and the law's dread vengeance
might fall upon me, through the last peril, even yet more surely than
through the first. Be composed, then, on this point! From my hand,
unless you urge it madly upon yourself, you are wholly safe. Let us
turn to my second method of attaining security. It lies, not in your
momentary cessation from persecutions; not in your absence from this
spot alone; you must quit the country--you must never return to it--your
home must be cast, and your very grave dug in a foreign soil. Are you
prepared for this? If not, I can say no more; and I again cast myself
passive into the arms of Fate."

"You ask," said Houseman, whose fears were allayed by Aram's address,
though, at the same time, his dissolute and desperate nature was subdued
and tamed in spite of himself, by the very composure of the loftier mind
with which it was brought in contact: "You ask," said he, "no trifling
favour of a man--to desert his country for ever; but I am no dreamer, to
love one spot better than another. I should, perhaps, prefer a foreign
clime, as the safer and the freer from old recollections, if I could
live in it as a man who loves th