“Say that word again,” muttered Dowley between his teeth, raising a cudgel that he grasped in his hand.
“Ask anything else—anything that is not wrong! I consented for you to give up my place. I obeyed you, though in sorrow and disappointment; but this thing I may not, cannot do, even if refusing cost me my life!”
“Then take the consequences!” exclaimed the man in a fury of passion, seizing the unhappy boy with one hand, while with the other he showered on him a torrent of blows. Mark winced beneath them, struggled, called out for assistance; but neither fear nor torture made him lift a hand against his earthly oppressor, or yield to the assault of the tempter within, who urged him to procure mercy at the price of his conscience!
Wearied at length with his barbarous labour, Dowley flung his bruised, bleeding, gasping victim into a dry ditch, and muttering to himself that he had served him out at last, walked with long, hurried strides from the spot.
“Now at the end of this valley was another, called the Valley of the Shadow of Death.”—_Pilgrim’s Progress._
“Oh! this is fearful! this is more terrible than all!” muttered Mark, as he regained slowly the consciousness that he had half lost. He attempted to raise himself, but motion was torture. He called out, but no one answered to his cry; he had been crossing the fields by a shorter path than the highroad, and therefore was not in the direct line of any thoroughfare, and might lie there for hours unnoticed. Mark felt as though the Shadow of Death were upon him; his mind was too confused and dizzy for prayer; it seemed to grasp nothing but the consciousness that something horrible had occurred. For long he lay there, half delirious with pain. The Pilgrim was passing through, perhaps, the darkest passage of his life.
How different was the fate of young Lord Fontonore, as, with his tutor seated beside him in his splendid carriage, he rolled along the highroad towards the north!
“I am so glad that yesterday’s storm is over!” cried he. “There’s nothing like travelling in an open carriage, except when it pours as it did last night. It raises one’s spirits, passing fast through the air, when the horses dash on without touch from the whip; and the air is so fresh, and the sky so blue, and every turn of the wheel brings us nearer to home!”