Colleton; your frankness relieves me of some heavy
thoughts, and I shall open my mind freely to you on the subject which
now troubles it. I need not tell you what my course of life has been. I
need not tell you what it is now. Bad enough, Mr. Colleton--bad enough,
as you must know by this time. Life, sir, is uncertain with all persons,
but far more uncertain with him whose life is such as mine. I know not
the hour, sir, when I may be knocked on the head. I have no confidence
in the people I go with; I have nothing to hope from the sympathies of
society, or the protection of the laws; and I have now arrived at that
time of life when my own experience is hourly repeating in my ears the
words of scripture: 'The wages of sin is death.' Mine has been a life of
sin, Mr. Colleton, and I must look for its wages. These thoughts have
been troubling me much of late, and I feel them particularly heavy now.
But, don't think, sir, that fear for myself makes up my suffering. I
fear for that poor girl, who has no protector, and may be doomed to the
control of one who would make a hell on earth for all under his
influence.
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