His mind was in too violent a state of agitation to care
for bodily suffering; but now that he was alone, the fiery indignation
that had upheld his spirit in the hour of his humiliation flickered and
went out, and the sense of degradation and intolerable wrong alone
remained.
'He remembered how his father had spurned him from his feet, had called
him a thief and a liar, and witnessed unmoved the infliction of a cruel
punishment, administered by the hand of the menial who had accused him
of the crime; and had ordered him from his presence without one word of
pity or affection.
'These after-thoughts were terrible. George felt that he had not
deserved this severity, and the tears which pride had restrained while
under the weight of Ralph Wilson's unsparing hand now burst forth in a
torrent, and he wept until the lamp of life flickered to extinction in
his panting breast.
'The mother whom he wished to save from the knowledge of his
degradation awoke suddenly from a short and disturbed sleep. She heard
the sobs and moans in the adjoining room, and recognised the voice of
her son. The next moment saw her seated upon his bed, her arms around
the weeping boy. All sense of her own sickness, of her weak state, was
gone. She was only conscious of his intense mental agony.
'He placed his aching head upon her faithful breast, he wound his
trembling arms around her slender neck, and poured into her
sympathizing ear the terrible tale of his wrongs,--how he had been
falsely accused of the commission of a heinous crime, his protestations
of innocence disregarded, and had been sentenced by his father to
receive a punishment more galling to him than death; that he had been
tempted to rebel against his father's authority, and curse the hand
that smote him--to hate where he had loved with such fond idolatry.
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