On perceiving that I had recovered my sensibility, he lifted his head. This motion attracted my attention. His countenance was mild, but sorrow and astonishment sat upon his features. I averted my eyes and feebly exclaimed, “Oh, fly!—fly far and forever!—I cannot behold you and live!” He did not rise upon his feet, but clasped his hands, and said, in a tone of deprecation, “I will fly. I am become a fiend, the sight of whom destroys. Yet tell me my offense! You have linked curses with my name; you ascribe to me a malice monstrous and infernal. I look around: all is loneliness and desert! This house and your brother’s are solitary and dismantled! You die away at the sight of me! My fear whispers that some deed of horror has been perpetrated; that I am the undesigning cause.” What language was this? Had he not avowed himself a ravisher? Had not this chamber witnessed his atrocious purposes? I besought him with new vehemence to go. He lifted his eyes:—“Great heaven! what have I done? I think I know the extent of my offenses. I have acted, but my actions have possibly effected more than I designed. This fear has brought me back from my retreat. I come to repair the evil of which my rashness was the cause, and to prevent more evil. I come to confess my errors.” “Wretch!” I cried, when my suffocating emotions would permit me to speak, “the ghosts of my sister and her children,—do they not rise to accuse thee? Who was it that blasted the intellect of Wieland? Who was it that urged him to fury and guided him to murder? Who, but thou and the devil, with whom thou art confederated?” At these words a new spirit pervaded his countenance. His eyes once more appealed to heaven. “If I have memory—if I have being— I am innocent. I intended no ill; but my folly, indirectly and remotely, may have caused it. But what words are these? Your brother lunatic! His children dead!” What should I infer from this deportment? Was the ignorance which these words implied real or pretended? Yet how could I imagine a mere human agency in these events? But, if the influence was preternatural or maniacal in my brother’s case, they must be equally so in my own. Then I remembered that the voice exerted was to save me from Carwin’s attempts. These ideas tended to abate my abhorrence of this man, and to detect the absurdity of my accusations. “Alas!” said I, “I have no one to accuse. Leave me to my fate. Fly from a scene stained with cruelty, devoted to despair.” Carwin stood for a time musing and mournful. At length he said, “What has happened? I came to expiate my crimes: let me know them in their full extent. I have horrible forebodings! What has happened?”