Robert Bramble, for it is long past midnight, and, weary in mind and
body, he had retired to that rest which he most certainly needed. But
sleep is hardly repose to the guilty, and he was trebly so. Phantoms of
all imaginable shapes flitted across his brain, pictures of suffering,
of misery and of danger, to all of which he seemed to be exposed, and
from which he had no power to flee. Alas, how fearful the shadows that
haunt a bad man's pillow. He writhed like one in physical pain, tossed
from side to side, while the cold perspiration stood in big drops upon
his brow and temples.

Now his dreams carry him back, far back a score of years, to his
childhood at Bramble Park, when all was innocence, and then, with
leaping strides, he finds himself, years after, even as to-day, bearing
deadly witness against his brother. His dead father seems standing by
his bedside, pointing at him a warning finger, and sadly chiding his
fearful want of feeling. He tosses and turns and writhes again, then
leaping from the uneasy bed, looks bewildered around, and half grows
alarmed. Quickly he wraps a dressing-gown about him, and hastily walks
back and forth to still the agony of feeling and the bitter phantoms of
his dreams. How haggard and wild he looks by that dim candle-light.

Once more he throws himself upon his bed, and, after a while, is again
asleep, if such unconsciousness can be called sleep. Again he tosses,
and turns, and sighs like one in a nightmare until at last, towards the
breaking of day, the quick, startling breathing ceases, and subsides
into a regular and equal respiration, and he lies still. Nature
overcomes all else, and he now sleeps, indeed, but not until he has
passed through a fearful purgatory of dreams, all too real, too
trying.--His brother, with soon the prospect of a disgraceful death on
the gallows, had not suffered thus. No, he was repentant for the wrong