The moment I saw the wound my teeth had made, I knew what I had done, and my heart died within me. I was self-condemned. It was a new and an awful sensation--a sensation that could not be for a moment endured. The misery was too intense to leave room for repentance even. With a sudden resolve born of despair, I shoved the type of the broken law into my pocket and followed my companions. But I kept at some distance behind them, for as yet I dared not hold further communication with respectable people. I did not, and do not now, believe that there was one amongst them who would have done as I had done. Probably also not one of them would have thought of my way of deliverance from unendurable self-contempt. The curse had passed upon me, but I saw a way of escape. A few yards further, they found the road we thought we had missed. It struck off into a hollow, the sides of which were covered with trees. As they turned into it they looked back and called me to come on. I ran as if I wanted to overtake them, but the moment they were out of sight, left the road for the grass, and set off at full speed in the same direction as before. I had not gone far before I was in the midst of trees, overflowing the hollow in which my companions had disappeared, and spreading themselves over the level above. As I entered their shadow, my old awe of the trees returned upon me--an awe I had nearly forgotten, but revived by my crime. I pressed along, however, for to turn back would have been more dreadful than any fear. At length, with a sudden turn, the road left the trees behind, and what a scene opened before me! I stood on the verge of a large space of greensward, smooth and well-kept as a lawn, but somewhat irregular in surface. From all sides it rose towards the centre. There a broad, low rock seemed to grow out of it, and upon the rock stood the lordliest house my childish eyes had ever beheld. Take situation and all, and I have scarcely yet beheld one to equal it. Half castle, half old English country seat, it covered the rock with a huge square of building, from various parts of which rose towers, mostly square also, of different heights. I stood for one brief moment entranced with awful delight. A building which has grown for ages, the outcome of the life of powerful generations, has about it a majesty which, in certain moods, is overpowering. For one brief moment I forgot my sin and its sorrow. But memory awoke with a fresh pang. To this lordly place I, poor miserable sinner, was a debtor by wrong and shame. Let no one laugh at me because my sin was small: it was enough for me, being that of one who had stolen for the first time, and that without previous declension, and searing of the conscience. I hurried towards the building, anxiously looking for some entrance.