Sir Thomas
Gourlay could not see and feel, for the moment, the criminal iniquity
of his black and ungodly ambition, and the crimes into which it involved
him. Still, the consciousness of the flagitious project in which he was
engaged against the unoffending son of his brother, the influence of the
hour, and the solitude in which he stood, together with the operation
upon his mind of some unaccountable fear apart from that of personal
violence--all, when united, threw him into a commotion that resulted
from such a dread as intimated that something supernatural must be near
him. He was seized by a violent shaking of the limbs, the perspiration
burst from every pore; and as he patted the horses a second time for
relief, he again perceived that their terrors were increasing and
keeping pace with his own. At length, his hair fairly stood, and his
excitement was nearly as high as excitement of such a merely ideal
character could go, when he thought he heard a step--a heavy, solemn,
unearthly step--that sounded as if there was something denouncing and
judicial in the terrible emphasis with which it went to his heart, or
rather to his conscience.
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