He now revolved the matter more seriously; and, as he did so, of course his own situation came again soberly under consideration. That situation was evidently anything but pleasant, for no man could be expected to find his pillow very soft when it was shaken by the hands of a gang of murderers. But Beauchamp was constitutionally a brave man. His impulses were not those of fear; and, though he had a very considerable share of imagination, yet when he wanted to frighten himself about anything, he had to think of it seriously, and call up all the dangers one by one. Now, in the present instance, there were so many unpleasant and perilous points in his position, which he could neither divert nor avoid, that, after a short reflection, he found it would be best and wisest not to think of the danger at all; and, when he had so settled the matter, he found no great difficulty in forgetting it altogether, although with a degree of feverish restlessness he turned and returned in his mind the conversation which he had heard in the adjoining room. It was evident that Walter Harrison had not told the whole truth to the old man who had given them shelter; and whether it was the smuggler's previous conclusions that had led him to believe the crime, from the consequences of which the young sailor was flying, had been committed in an endeavour to defraud the revenue, or whether by a direct falsehood on the lad's own part, Beauchamp naturally deduced from every thing which he had discovered, that Willy Small, as they called him, would be the first to shrink from the perpetrators of the deeper offence which had really been offered to the laws of God and man. This was, at least, some consolation; and although Beauchamp still felt a sensation of awe and horror when he reflected calmly on the whole transactions of that night, yet his feelings were more like those of one who reads a horrid tale of crime and sorrow in the newspapers, than those of one around whose very person the circumstances had been transacted, and who was in some degree a party to the whole. Nevertheless, he could not go to sleep over it, with the easy carelessness of one of those daily devourers of manufactured horrors, who join to patronize the periodical press with the devout idolaters of agitation, and who, like men fed upon deviled gizzards, find that nothing on earth has enough cayenne. Whether it was busy thoughts, or a broken head, or an ancle that had been dislocated, that kept him awake, I cannot tell; but he lay in feverish and uneasy restlessness long after all was quiet in the house, and even the murderers had retired--I had almost said--to sleep.