Here will I dedicate my life to Thee
for the land's sake. Not for my soul's sake, O my God! If it be Thy will,
let my soul be cast away; but for the soul of him whose body I slew, and
for his land, let my life be the long sacrifice."
Dreams he had had the night before--terrible dreams, which he could never
forget; dreams of a fugitive being hunted through the world, escaping and
eluding, only to be hemmed in once more; on and on till he grew grey and
gaunt, and the hunt suddenly ended in a great morass, into which he
plunged with the howling world behind him. The grey, dank mists came down
on him, his footsteps sank deeper and deeper, and ever the cries, as of
damned spirits, grew in his ears. Mocking shapes flitted past him, the
wings of obscene birds buffeted him, the morass grew up about him; and
now it was all a red moving mass like a dead sea heaving about him. With
a moan of agony he felt the dolorous flood above his shoulders, and then
a cry pierced the gloom and the loathsome misery, and a voice he knew
called to him, "David, David, I am coming!" and he had awaked with the
old hallucination of his uncle's voice calling to him in the dawn.
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