ER VII.

THE FLIGHT FROM GURT-NA-MORRA.

It was by one of those sudden and inexplicable revulsions which
occasionally restore to sense and intellect the maniac of years standing,
that I was no sooner left alone in my chamber than I became perfectly
sober. The fumes of the wine--and I had drunk deeply--were dissipated at
once; my head, which but a moment before was half wild with excitement, was
now cool, calm, and collected; and stranger than all, I, who had only an
hour since entered the dining-room with all the unsuspecting freshness of
boyhood, became, by a mighty bound, a man,--a man in all my feelings of
responsibility, a man who, repelling an insult by an outrage, had resolved
to stake his life upon the chance. In an instant a new era in life had
opened before me; the light-headed gayety which fearlessness and youth
impart was replaced by one absorbing thought,--one all-engrossing,
all-pervading impression, that if I did not follow up my quarrel with
Bodkin, I was dishonored and disgraced, my little knowledge of such matters
not being sufficient to assure me that I was now the aggressor, and that
any further steps in the affair should come from his side.

So thoroughly did my own griefs occupy me, that I had no thought for the
disappointment my poor uncle was destined to meet with in hearing that the
Blake interest was lost to him, and the former breach between the families
irreparably widened by the events of the evening. Escape was my first
thought; but how to accomplish it? The door, a solid one of Irish oak,
doubly locked and bolted, defied all my efforts to break it open; the
window was at least five-and-twenty feet from the ground, and not a tree
near to swing into. I shouted, I called aloud, I opened the sash, and tried
if any one outside were within hearing; but in vain. Weary and exhausted,
I sat down upon my bed and ruminated over my fortunes. Vengeance--quick,
entire, decisive vengeance--I thirsted and panted for; and every moment
I lived under the insult inflicted on me seemed an age of torturing and
maddening agony. I rose with a leap; a thought had just occurred to me.
I drew the bed towards the window, and fastening the sheet to one of the
posts with a firm knot, I twisted it into a rope, and let myself down to
within about twelve feet of the ground, when I let go my hold, and dropped
upon the grass beneath safe and uninjured. A thin, misty rain was falling,
and I now perceived, for the first tim