rendered capable of piercing the hearts
of men! Yes, it was a charm--a new charm--it was Suspicion! I now
practised myself in the use of arms,--they made my sole companions.
Peaceful, as I seemed to the world, I felt there was that eternally
within me with which the world was at war.

"I do not deceive you. I did not feel what men call remorse! Having once
convinced myself that I had removed from the earth a thing that injured
and soiled its tribes,--that I had in crushing one worthless life, but
without crushing one virtue--one feeling--one thought that could benefit
others, strode to a glorious end;--having once convinced myself of this,
I was not weak enough to feel a vague remorse for a deed I would not
allow, in my case, to be a crime. I did not feel remorse, but I felt
regret. The thought that had I waited three days I might have been
saved, not from guilt, but from the chance of shame,--from the
degradation of sinking to Houseman's equal--of feeling that man had the
power to hurt me--that I was no longer above the reach of human malice,
or human curiosity--that I was made a slave to my own secret--that I was
no longer lord of my heart, to shew or to conceal it--that at any hour,
in the possession of honours, by the hearth of love, I might be dragged
forth and proclaimed a murderer--that I held my life, my reputation, at
the breath of accident--that in the moment I least dreamed of, the earth
might yield its dead, and the gibbet demand its victim;--this could
I feel--all this--and not make a spectre of the past:--a spectre that
walked by my side--that slept at my bed--that rose from my books--that
glided between me and the stars of heaven, that stole along the flowers,
and withered their sweet breath--that whispered in my ear, 'Toil,
fool, and be wise; the gift of wisdom is to place us above the reach of
fortune, but thou art her veriest minion!' Yes; I paused at last from my
wanderings, and surrounded myself with books, and knowledge became
once more to me what it had been, a thirst; but not what it had been, a
reward. I occupied my thoughts--I laid up new hoards within my mind--I
looked around, and I saw few whose stores were like my own,--but where,
with the passion for wisdom still alive within me--where was that once
more ardent desire which had cheated me across so dark a chasm between
youth and manhood--between past and present life--the desire of applying
that wisdom to the service of mankind? Gone--dead--b