That tacit animal confession and acknowledgment were alone sufficient to madden a temper such as that of Rivers. Easily aroused, his ferocity was fearless and atrocious, but not measured or methodical. His mind was not marked--we had almost said tempered--by that wholesome indifference of mood which, in all matters of prime villany, is probably the most desirable constituent. He was, as we have seen, a creature of strong passions, morbid ambition, quick and even habitual excitement; though, at times, endeavoring to put on that air of sarcastic superiority to all emotion which marked the character of the ascetic philosopher--a character to which he had not the slightest claim of resemblance, and the very affectation of which, whenever he became aroused or irritated, was completely forgotten. Without referring--as Munro would have done, and, indeed, as he subsequently did--to the precise events which had already just taken place and were still in progress about him, and which made all parties equally obnoxious with himself to human punishment, and for an offence far more criminal in its dye than that which the youth laid to his charge--he could not avoid the momentary apprehension, which--succeeding with the quickness of thought the intelligent and conscious glance of Colleton--immediately came over him. His eye, seldom distinguished by such a habit, quailed before it; and the deep malignity and festering hatred of his soul toward the youth, which it so unaccountably entertained before, underwent, by this mortification of his pride, a due degree of exaggeration. Ralph, though wise beyond his years, and one who, in a thought borrowed in part from Ovid, we may say, could rather compute them by events than ordinary time, wanted yet considerably in that wholesome, though rather dowdyish virtue, which men call prudence. He acted on the present occasion precisely as he might have done in the college campus, with all the benefits of a fair field and a plentiful crowd of backers. Without duly reflecting whether an accusation of the kind he preferred, at such a time, to such men, and against one of their own accomplices, would avail much, if anything, toward the punishment of the criminal--not to speak of his own risk, necessarily an almost certain consequence from such an implied determination not to be _particeps criminis_ with any of them, he approached, and boldly denounced Rivers as a murderous villain; and urgently called upon those around him to aid in his arrest. But he was unheard--he had no auditors; nor did this fact result from any unwillingness on their part to hear and listen to the charge against one so detested as the accused. They could see and hear but of one subject--they could comprehend no other. The events of such fresh and recent occurrence were in all minds and before all eyes; and few, besides Forrester, either heard to understand, or listened for a moment to the recital.