Do you
see nothing particular?"
"Humph!" ejaculated the peddler. "There is something particular, indeed,
to be seen behind the thicket on our left. Turn your head a little, and
you may see and profit by it too."
Henry eagerly seized this permission to look aside, and the blood
curdled to his heart as he observed that they were passing a gallows,
which unquestionably had been erected for his own execution. He turned
his face from the sight, in undisguised horror.
"There is a warning to be prudent," said the peddler, in the sententious
manner that he often adopted.
"It is a terrific sight, indeed!" cried Henry, for a moment veiling his
eyes with his hand, as if to drive a vision from before him.
The peddler moved his body partly around, and spoke with energetic but
gloomy bitterness, "And yet, Captain Wharton, you see it where the
setting sun shines full upon you; the air you breathe is clear, and
fresh from the hills before you. Every step that you take leaves that
hated gallows behind; and every dark hollow, and every shapeless rock in
the mountains, offers you a hiding place from the vengeance of your
enemies. But I have seen the gibbet raised, when no place of refuge
offered. Twice have I been buried in dungeons, where, fettered and in
chains, I have passed nights in torture, looking forward to the
morning's dawn that was to light me to a death of infamy.
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