The door was thrown open, and the form of the
stranger, more like a corpse than living man, rushed into the room.
"All white!" yell'd the conscience-stricken creature--"all white, and
with the grave-clothes around him. One shoulder was bare, and I saw,"
he whisper'd, "I saw blue streaks upon it. It was horrible, and I
cried aloud. He stepp'd toward me! He came to my very bedside; his
small hand almost touch'd my face. I could not bear it, and fled."
The miserable man bent his head down upon his bosom; convulsive
rattlings shook his throat; and his whole frame waver'd to and fro
like a tree in a storm. Bewilder'd and shock'd, Gills look'd at his
apparently deranged guest, and knew not what answer to make, or what
course of conduct to pursue.
Thrusting out his arms and his extended fingers, and bending down
his eyes, as men do when shading them from a glare of lightning, the
stranger stagger'd from the door, and, in a moment further, dash'd
madly through the passage which led through the kitchen into the outer
road. The old man heard the noise of his falling footsteps, sounding
fainter and fainter in the distance, and then, retreating, dropp'd his
own exhausted limbs into the chair from which he had been arous'd so
terribly. It was many minutes before his energies recover'd their
accustomed tone again. Strangely enough, his wife, unawaken'd by the
stranger's ravings, still slumber'd on as profoundly as ever.
Pass we on to a far different scene--the embarkation of the British
troops for the distant land whose monarch was never more to wield
the sceptre over a kingdom lost by his imprudence and tyranny.
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