egradation.

For hours this agony of thought racked him. He cried out as though with
physical pain, and then lay in a stupor, exhausted with actual physical
suffering. It was hopeless to think of freedom and of honour. Let him
keep silence, and pursue the life fate had marked out for him. He would
return to bondage. The law would claim him as an absconder, and would
mete out to him such punishment as was fitting. Perhaps he might escape
severest punishment, as a reward for his exertions in saving the child.
He might consider himself fortunate if such was permitted to him.
Fortunate! Suppose he did not go back at all, but wandered away into the
wilderness and died? Better death than such a doom as his. Yet need he
die? He had caught goats, he could catch fish. He could build a hut.
In here was, perchance, at the deserted settlement some remnant of seed
corn that, planted, would give him bread. He had built a boat, he had
made an oven, he had fenced in a hut. Surely he could contrive to live
alone savage and free. Alone! He had contrived all these marvels alone!
Was not the boat he himself had built below upon the shore? Why not
escape in her, and leave to their fate the miserable creatures who had
treated him with such ingratitude?

The idea flashed into his brain, as though someone had spoken the words
into his ear. Twenty strides would place him in possession of the boat,
and half an hour's drifting with the current would take him beyond
pursuit. Once outside the Bar, he would make for the westward, in the
hopes of falling in with some whaler. He would doubtless meet with one
before many days, and he was well supplied with provision and water in
the meantime. A tale of shipwreck would satisfy the sailors, and--he
paused--he had forgotten that the rags which he wore would betray him.
With an exclamation of despair, he started from the posture in which
he was lying. He thrust out his hands to raise himself, and his fingers
came in contact with something soft. He had been lying at the foot of
some loose stones that were piled cairnwise beside a low-growing bush;
and the object that he had touched was protruding from beneath these
stones. He caught it and dragged it forth. It was the shirt of poor
Bates. With trembling hands he tore away the stones, and pulled forth
the rest of the garments. They seemed as though they had been left
purposely for him. Heaven had sent him the very disguise he needed.

The night had passed