her so that she might not possibly escape from him out into the
darkness. Twice or thrice in those few minutes she made up her mind
to make such an attempt, feeling that it would be better to leave
him in possession of the house, and make sure, if possible, of her
own life. There was no money there; not a dollar! What money her
father kept in his possession was locked up in his safe at Hamilton.
And might he not keep to his threat, and murder her, when he found
that she could give him nothing? She did not tremble outwardly, as
she stood there watching him as he ate, but she thought how probable
it might be that her last moments were very near. And yet she could
scrutinise his features, form, and garments, so as to carry away in
her mind a perfect picture of them. Aaron Trow--for of course it
was the escaped convict--was not a man of frightful, hideous aspect.
Had the world used him well, giving him when he was young ample
wages and separating him from turbulent spirits, he also might have
used the world well; and then women would have praised the
brightness of his eye and the manly vigour of his brow. But things
had not gone well with him. He had been separated from the wife he
had loved, and the children who had been raised at his knee,--
separated by his own violence; and now, as he had said of himself,
he was a wolf rather than a man. As he stood there satisfying the
craving of his appetite, breaking up the large morsels of food, he
was an object very sad to be seen. Hunger had made him gaunt and
yellow, he was squalid with the dirt of his hidden lair, and he had
the look of a beast;--that look to which men fall when they live
like the brutes of prey, as outcasts from their brethren. But still
there was that about his brow which might have redeemed him,--which
might have turned her horror into pity, had he been willing that it
should be so.