As soon as day-light appeared, I was packed about my business, with the
hisses and execrations of the yeoman's family, who viewed me as a being
to be shunned, ascribing to me the visitations of that unholy night.
Again was I on my way southwards, as lonely, hopeless, and degraded a
being as was to be found on life's weary round. As I limped out the
way, I wept, thinking of what I might have been, and what I really had
become: of my high and flourishing hopes when I set out as the avenger
of God on the sinful children of men; of all that I had dared for the
exaltation and progress of the truth; and it was with great difficulty
that my faith remained unshaken, yet was I preserved from that sin, and
comforted myself with the certainty that the believer's progress
through life is one of warfare and suffering.
My case was indeed a pitiable one. I was lame, hungry, fatigued, and my
resources on the very eve of being exhausted. Yet these were but
secondary miseries, and hardly worthy of a thought compared with those
I suffered inwardly. I not only looked around me with terror at every
one that approached, but I was become a terror to myself, or, rather,
my body and soul were become terrors to each other; and, had it been
possible, I felt as if they would have gone to war. I dared not look at
my face in a glass, for I shuddered at my own image and likeness. I
dreaded the dawning, and trembled at the approach of night, nor was
there one thing in nature that afforded me the least delight.
In this deplorable state of body and mind, was I jogging on towards the
Tweed, by the side of the small river called Ellan, when, just at the
narrowest part of the glen, whom should I meet full in the face but the
very being in all the universe of God would the most gladly have
shunned. I had no power to fly fro him, neither durst I, for the spirit
within me, accuse him of falsehood and renounce his fellowship. I stood
before him like a condemned criminal, staring him in the face, ready to
be winded, twisted, and tormented as he pleased. He regarded me with a
sad and solemn look. How changed was now that majestic countenance to
one of haggard despair--changed in all save the extraordinary likeness
to my late brother, a resemblance which misfortune and despair tended
only to heighten. There were no kind greetings passed between us at
meeting, like those which pass between the men of the world; he looked
on me with eyes that froze the currents of my blood, but spoke not till
I assumed as much courage as to articulate: "You here! I hope you have
brought me tidings of comfort?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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