Then there was a long, conscious pause; neither the sick man nor the watcher spoke--the one contending with his natural sullen pride, which would confess no sin, and the horror within him of knowing that so far as intention and purpose went he was as guilty as any actual murderer; the other grieved, silent, afraid, anxious _not_ to hear that some diabolical purpose had been nursed in that young head, yet sadly fearing that, whether confessed or not, the wickedness had been there.
"Uncle," said Horace, at last, the words bursting from his lips in an eager paroxysm of defence against himself, and vindication to his own conscience--"Uncle, _I_ did him no harm."
"I am very thankful to hear it, Horace," said the Colonel, very gravely; then he made another pause--"unless it will relieve your mind tell me no more," he said, quickly--"only, Horace, remember, you have been very near the grave; perhaps you know yourself that you have been near something more terrible than the grave; you should pause and think now while you can; for every evil intention, as well as for every act of sin, there is pardon with God, for Jesus' sake."
He said it simply, but with a solemn, almost judicial gravity. He could not help guessing what had been going on in the troubled spirit beside him, of which he knew so little; he could not help shuddering at the thought of the horrible guilt from which, by accident, as it appeared, and interposition of God, the young man had been unwittingly preserved. God help him!--so young, so wretched, to drag the hideous burden of that remembrance through all his days of life! The deepest pity, even amid his horror, struck the old soldier's noble, innocent heart. He could not comprehend the guilt--but he felt the remorse, with a compassion that was half divine.
Horace made no reply--he shrank, in spite of himself, as though he would have crept away morally out of his uncle's presence; for the instant the young man realized, with a desperate force of conviction, the "gulf fixed" between heaven and hell which none can pass over; he felt it in his guilt a thousand times more deeply than the pure heart beside him did, in its tender depths of pity. He lay still in his weakness, with a mortified consciousness of humiliation and inferiority, insufferable to his arrogant spirit. Then it occurred to him that there was still one thing, by which he might drag himself up fictitiously to that higher elevation, which he recognized vaguely in his downfall, and envied, though he knew it not. He turned once more towards the watcher by his bed with a sudden movement, which was so quick as to give him pain.