"
"I dare not. The thought is sufficiently horrible without the thing. I
hear some devil whispering it too frequently in my ears, to venture upon
its utterance myself. But you--how you can live without feeling it,
after your experience, which has been so much more dreadful than mine, I
know not."
"I do feel it, Munro, but have long since ceased to fear it. The
reiteration takes away the terror which is due rather to the novelty
than to the offence. But when I began, I felt it. The first sleep I had
after the affair of Jessup was full of tortures. The old man, I thought,
lay beside me in my bed; his blood ran under me, and clotted around me,
and fastened me there, while his gashed face kept peering into mine, and
his eyes danced over me with the fierce light of a threatening comet.
The dream nearly drove me mad, and mad I should have been had I gone to
my prayers. I knew that, and chose a different course for relief."
"What was that?"
"I sought for another victim as soon after as I conveniently could.
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