d
for an offence far more criminal in its dye than that which the youth
laid to his charge--he could not avoid the momentary apprehension,
which--succeeding with the quickness of thought the intelligent and
conscious glance of Colleton--immediately came over him. His eye, seldom
distinguished by such a habit, quailed before it; and the deep malignity
and festering hatred of his soul toward the youth, which it so
unaccountably entertained before, underwent, by this mortification of
his pride, a due degree of exaggeration.

Ralph, though wise beyond his years, and one who, in a thought borrowed
in part from Ovid, we may say, could rather compute them by events than
ordinary time, wanted yet considerably in that wholesome, though rather
dowdyish virtue, which men call prudence. He acted on the present
occasion precisely as he might have done in the college campus, with all
the benefits of a fair field and a plentiful crowd of backers. Without
duly reflecting whether an accusation of the kind he preferred, at such
a time, to such men, and against one of their own accomplices, would
avail much, if anything, toward the punishment of the criminal--not to
speak of his own risk, necessarily an almost certain consequence from
such an implied determination not to be _particeps criminis_ with any of
them, he approached, and boldly denounced Rivers as a murderous villain;
and urgently called upon those around him to aid in his arrest.

But he was unheard--he had no auditors; nor did this fact result from
any unwillingness on their part to hear and listen to the charge against
one so detested as the accused. They could see and hear but of one
subject--they could comprehend no other. The events of such fresh and
recent occurrence were in all minds and before all eyes; and few,
besides Forrester, either heard to understand, or listened for a moment
to the recital.

Nor did the latter and now unhappy personage appear to give it much more
consideration than the rest. Hurried on by the force of associating
circumstances, and by promptings not of himself or his, he had been an
active performer in the terrible drama we have already witnessed, and
the catastrophe of which he could now only, and in vain, deplore.
Leaning with vacant stare and lacklustre vision against the neighboring
rock, he seemed indifferent to, and perhaps ignorant of, the occurrences
taking place around him. He had interfered when the youth and Rivers
were in contact,