Two of the
slave men sprung across the sill to pursue Dr. Dunlap, but they could do
nothing. They could see him paddling away from the house, and giving
himself up to the current; a desperate man, whose fate was from that
hour unknown. Night and the paralysis which the flood laid upon human
action favored him. Did a still pitying soul bend above his wild-eyed
and reckless plunging through whirls of water, comprehending that he had
been startled into assassination; that the deed was, like the result of
his marriage, a tragedy he did not foresee? Some men are made for
strong domestic ties, yet run with brutal precipitation into the
loneliness of evil.
A desire to get out of the flood-bound tavern, an unreasonable impulse
to see Angelique Saucier and perhaps be of use to her, a mistakenly
silent entering of the house which he hardly knew how to
approach,--these were the conditions which put him in the way of his
crime. The old journey of Cain was already begun while Angelique was
robbing her great-grand-aunt's bed of pillows to put under Rice Jones.
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