that he would not recover.

"Don't flatter yourself with that. I shall recover sufficiently to make
you wish that you had never seen me," he answered, as he raised himself
on his arm and glared fiercely at me.

I thought that he uttered but an empty threat which he had no power to
execute. Still he lived on, and I tended him as if he had been a friend
or brother. I had made my hut at some little distance from his. I had
one night gone to sleep, leaving him not worse than he had been for some
time past, when I suddenly awoke with a start, and hearing a noise
looked out. What was my horror to see Owen stalking stealthily along
with a huge piece of heavy driftwood uplifted in his hands, as if it
were a club. I darted out on the other side of the hut as down came the
log with a crash above where my head had just been laid, and a fearful
shriek rang through the night air. I expected to see Owen following me,
but he lay, as I looked back, across the ruins of my hut. I slowly
approached--he did not move--the timber had fallen from his grasp. I
touched his hand. He was dead.

I must bring my tale to a close. I was convinced that the wretched man
was mad, though, from what afterwards came to my knowledge, there was
more reason than I had supposed why his madness should have taken the
form of hatred towards me. I cannot describe how I managed to pass the
many dreary days I was destined to spend in solitude on that island, or
how I was at length rescued by a South-Sea whaler, and ultimately fell
in with my own ship, on board which I was heartily welcomed, having long
been given up as lost. Owen's death excited universal horror. Pearson
told me that he had been directed by the captain to examine his papers,
among which he found parts of a journal, in which he described his
bitter disappointment on discovering that the estate which he thought
would be his had gone to another, and how, considering himself wronged,
he had resolved to wreak his vengeance on the head of the person who had
obtained what he conceived ought to have been his; how he had gone to
see me, and finding that I had resolved to enter the navy, how he had
formed the diabolical plan which he had attempted to carry out, but in
every step of which he had been so mercifully frustrated.

I immediately wrote home to say that I was alive and well, with an
account of my adventures, and expressed a hope that my letter would
arrive in time to prevent Jack fro