rld had not yet developed the evil germ in his
character, he had read and pondered over the mysterious connection
between the cock, Shakspeare's "bird of dawning," and the scenes which
preceded the Crucifixion. Remembering that the cock had seemed to appear
and speak as the accuser of Peter, he had insensibly come to connect
those events with the blacker guilt of Iscariot, and to look upon the
bird as the watcher and detecter. In olden days this had not troubled
him: perhaps it would not have done so, only four or five months before,
when his hands were so much nearer stainless than they could be called
at that hour. Now, on the verge of his marriage, and when the double
tree of murder that he had planted (murder of character and murder of
person!) was about bearing welcome and triumphant fruit, the rooster's
cry, so sharp, sudden and unexpected, came to him like the voice of an
accusing spirit. It may be taken as a proof of his cowardice when we say
that momentarily his cheek whitened and his limbs trembled; and perhaps
every criminal is a coward, because he dares not do right and trust the
event with the overruling providences. But Egbert Crawford was no
_physical_ coward, as we may have occasion to know before we have closed
this relation. Yet he did whiten, and he did tremble. Was there
something ominous in this sudden disturbance of the Sabbath quiet? Did
it foreshadow another and a more startling disturbance, through which
the dark, silent current of the river of guilt would be splashed into by
the falling stones of the temple of error overhanging it? Was there in
it an omen of the sudden flash of a bright and unendurable light through
those black caverns, hitherto supposed to be impenetrable, where crawl
the loathsome and slimy reptiles of deceit and treachery?

Pshaw! why should there be anything of this involved? Cocks had crowed
before, even at noon-tide in summer, and the world had outlived the
omen! Nevertheless the sound, especially so loud and grating a one, in
which the bray of the donkey was so evenly mixed with the hideous scream
of the peacock before rain, was an inopportune and impudent one; and the
Colonel would have been very likely to wring chanticleer's neck if it
had happened to come within the clutch of his fingers. As it was, he
determined to cause an immediate abandonment of that stronghold, and
sprung up to look for a club or a stone with which the enemy could be
dislodged; when the rooster es