more as they called him "Coward!" What he said he knew not; but in
a moment they were gathered round him, and clasping him in their arms;
and now, his hands, his cheeks, his clothes, were streaked with blood;
he tried to wipe the foul stains out, but his fingers grew clotted,
and his feet seemed to plash in the red stream, and his savage comrades
laughed fiercely at his efforts, and mocked him.

"What am I, that you should clasp me thus?" he cried; and a voice from
his inmost heart replied, "A murderer!" The cold sweat rolled in great
drops down his brow, while the foam of agony dewed his pallid lips, and
his frame trembled in a terrible convulsion. Confused and fearful images
of bloodshed and its penalty, the crime and the scaffold, commingled,
worked in his maddened brain. He heard the rush of feet, as if thousands
were hurrying on, to see him die, and voices that swelled like the sea
at midnight. Nor was the vision all unreal: for already two men had
entered the hut.

The dreadful torture of his thoughts had now reached its climax, and
with a bound Owen sprang from his sleep, and cried in a shriek of
heart-wrung anguish, "No, never--I am not a murderer. Owen Connor can
meet his death like a man, but not with blood upon him."

"Owen Connor! Owen Connor, did you say?" repeated one of the two who
stood before him; "are you, then, Owen Connor?"

"I am," replied Owen, whose dreams were still the last impression on his
mind. "I give myself up;--do what ye will with me;--hang, imprison, or
transport me; I'll never gainsay you."

"Owen, do you not know me?" said the other, removing his travelling cap,
and brushing back the hair from his forehead.

"No, I know nothing of you," said he, fiercely.

"Not remember your old friend--your landlord's son, Owen?"

Owen stared at him without speaking; his parted lips and fixed gaze
evidencing the amazement which came over him.

"You saved my life, Owen," said the young man, horror-struck by the
withered and wasted form of the peasant.

"And you have made me this," muttered Owen, as he let fall the pistol
from his bosom. "Yes," cried he, with an energy very different from
before, "I came out this night, sworn to murder that man beside
you--your agent, Lucas; my soul is perjured if my hands are not bloody."

Lucas instantly took a pistol from the breast of his coat, and cocked
it; while the ghastly whiteness of his cheek shewed he did not think the
danger was yet over.

"Pu