Round the creature's waist was a ring of iron, to which was
attached a heavy but broken chain--the chain I had heard clanking.
With a second glance I noted that part of the chain was wrapped in
straw to prevent its galling the wearer. The creature--I cannot
call it a man--had the marks of fetters on its wrists, the bony arm
that protruded through one tattered sleeve was scarred and bruised;
the feet were bare, and lacerated by pebbles and briers, and one of
them was wounded, and wrapped in a morsel of rag. And the lean
hands, one of which held my sleeve, were armed with talons like an
eagle's. In an instant the horrid truth flashed upon me--I was in
the grasp of a madman. Better the phantom that scares the sight
than the wild beast that rends and tears the quivering flesh--the
pitiless human brute that has no heart to be softened, no reason at
whose bar to plead, no compassion, naught of man save the form and
the cunning. I gasped in terror. Ah! the mystery of those
ensanguined fingers, those gory, wolfish jaws! that face, all
besmeared with blackening blood, is revealed!
The slain sheep, so mangled and rent--the fantastic butchery--the
print of the naked foot--all, all were explained; and the chain,
the broken link of which was found near the slaughtered animals--it
came from his broken chain--the chain he had snapped, doubtless, in
his escape from the asylum where his raging frenzy had been
fettered and bound, in vain! in vain! Ah me! how had this grisly
Samson broken manacles and prison bars--how had he eluded guardian
and keeper and a hostile world, and come hither on his wild way,
hunted like a beast of prey, and snatching his hideous banquet like
a beast of prey, too! Yes, through the tatters of his mean and
ragged garb I could see the marks of the seventies, cruel and
foolish, with which men in that time tried to tame the might of
madness.
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