In the meantime, the sheriff and most of the other gentlemen had dismounted, and we all surrounded the body of Robert Thornton, who lay perfectly still with his face on the ground. Mathew Leary turned him over; and we then saw a large pool of blood which had flowed from a wound in his chest, through which the bullet had passed out. It was on the left side, and there could be little doubt the shot had gone right through his heart. His career of wickedness was over. "His account was closed," as a quaint old writer has it; "every item transferred from the day-book to the ledger; the balance struck, and the whole to be settled at the great day of reckoning." This is one of those cases of retributive justice which come from time to time to convince all who are convinceable of the moral government of God; while the numerous exceptions form a strong argument--used potently by Voltaire--in favour of the immortality of the soul, the punishment of vice, and reward of virtue hereafter on that great day when every man shall be judged according to his doings. Robert Thornton and his father had set out in life well-to-do in worldly circumstances: had deliberately cast from them the restraints of justice and honour, of religious and of moral principle; had gone on trusting to subtlety and fraud, in despite of repeated failures and reiterated warnings; had hardened themselves against the very reproofs of the results of their own actions, till they had deprived themselves of character and honour, of means and resources--till the very necessity of their condition drove them from bad to worse, while the hedged-in way of disgrace and ruin grew narrower and more inevitable at every step they took. And, at last, one of the two had fallen in a disgraceful scheme to cover one outrage by another. "Here, leave him there," said the sheriff, after we had gazed a moment upon the pale and inanimate features. "Nothing can be done for him. Who is the other lying out there?" "That is Mr. William Thornton," answered Matthew Leary; "but what's become of the black boy, I can't tell; unless he's gone off with the other niggers. The old man's as dead as a door nail, I'll bet; for his blood was so near the skin, that the least hole would let it all run out." "Hold your tongue, sir," said the sheriff; "this is no time for joking." "Devil a bit am I joking," answered Mat Leary, "as the priest said to us the other day, when he told us we were all going to hell, and no mistake. I think he was right too."