I heard him cry that he would try to
love me, - not that he did, - and then I saw him running back
towards the house. The next I saw was my own sword naked in my
hand, and he lying at my feet stark dead, - dabbled here and there
with blood, but otherwise no different from what I had seen him in
his sleep - in the same attitude too, with his cheek resting upon
his little hand.
I took him in my arms and laid him - very gently now that he was
dead - in a thicket. My wife was from home that day, and would not
return until the next. Our bedroom window, the only sleeping-room
on that side of the house, was but a few feet from the ground, and
I resolved to descend from it at night and bury him in the garden.
I had no thought that I had failed in my design, no thought that
the water would be dragged and nothing found, that the money must
now lie waste, since I must encourage the idea that the child was
lost or stolen. All my thoughts were bound up and knotted together
in the one absorbing necessity of hiding what I had done.
How I felt when they came to tell me that the child was missing,
when I ordered scouts in all directions, when I gasped and trembled
at every one's approach, no tongue can tell or mind of man
conceive.
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