The sweat has
started from limbs that seemed already drained of their moisture; and if
I ventured to the hole that admitted air through grates of iron to look
out upon the smiles of nature, which God has bestowed for the meanest of
His creatures, the gibbet has glared before my eyes, like an evil
conscience harrowing the soul of a dying man. Four times have I been in
their power, besides this last; but--twice--did I think my hour had
come. It is hard to die at the best, Captain Wharton; but to spend your
last moments alone and unpitied, to know that none near you so much as
think of the fate that is to you the closing of all that is earthly; to
think that, in a few hours, you are to be led from the gloom, which, as
you dwell on what follows, becomes dear to you, to the face of day, and
there to meet all eyes fixed upon you, as if you were a wild beast; and
to lose sight of everything amidst the jeers and scoffs of your fellow
creatures--that, Captain Wharton, that indeed is to die!"
Henry listened in amazement, as his companion uttered this speech with a
vehemence altogether new to him; both seemed to have forgotten their
danger and their disguises.
"What! were you ever so near death as that?"
"Have I not been the hunted beast of these hills for three years past?"
resumed Harvey; "and once they even led me to the foot of the gallows
itself, and I escaped only by an alarm from the royal troops.
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