His eyes
once more appealed to heaven. "If I have memory--if I have being--
I am innocent. I intended no ill; but my folly, indirectly and
remotely, may have caused it. But what words are these? Your
brother lunatic! His children dead!"
What should I infer from this deportment? Was the ignorance which
these words implied real or pretended? Yet how could I imagine a
mere human agency in these events? But, if the influence was
preternatural or maniacal in my brother's case, they must be
equally so in my own. Then I remembered that the voice exerted was
to save me from Carwin's attempts. These ideas tended to abate my
abhorrence of this man, and to detect the absurdity of my
accusations.
"Alas!" said I, "I have no one to accuse. Leave me to my fate.
Fly from a scene stained with cruelty, devoted to despair."
Carwin stood for a time musing and mournful. At length he said,
"What has happened? I came to expiate my crimes: let me know them
in their full extent. I have horrible forebodings! What has
happened?"
I was silent; but, recollecting the intimation given by this man
when he was detected in my closet, which implied some knowledge of
that power which interfered in my favor, I eagerly inquired, "What
was that voice which called upon me to hold when I attempted to
open the closet? What face was that which I saw at the bottom of
the stairs? Answer me truly.
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