When all these arrangements were
completed, the little wagon, which had so long been the tenement of
Inez, was drawn before the tent, into which the insensible body of the
kidnapper had been borne, and preparations were evidently made for the
reception of another prisoner. Then it was, as Abiram appeared, pale,
terrified, and tottering beneath a load of detected guilt, that the
younger members of the family were first apprised that he still
belonged to the class of the living. A general and superstitious
impression had spread among them, that his crime had been visited by a
terrible retribution from Heaven; and they now gazed at him, as at a
being who belonged rather to another world, than as a mortal, who,
like themselves, had still to endure the last agony before the great
link of human existence could be broken. The criminal himself appeared
to be in a state, in which the most sensitive and startling terror was
singularly combined with total physical apathy. The truth was, that
while his person had been numbed by the shock, his susceptibility to
apprehension kept his agitated mind in unrelieved distress.
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