CHAPTER XIII.
"The time is come; thy chances of escape |
Colonel Walton, upon the departure of his guests, retired to an inner apartment. His spirits, depressed enough before, were now considerably more so. Mingled feelings were at strife in his bosom—doubts and fears, hopes and misgivings—a sense of degradation—a more unpleasant consciousness of shame. The difficulties of his situation grew and gathered before his eyes the more he surveyed them; they called for deliberate thought, yet they also demanded early and seasonable determination. The time allowed him for decision by the ruling powers was brief, and the matter to be decided involved, in addition to the personal risks of life and liberty, the probable forfeiture of an immense estate, and the beggary, in consequence, of an only and beloved daughter. To save these, in part, from what he conceived otherwise to be inevitable ruin, he had originally laid aside his arms. He was now taught, in the most impressive manner, the error of which he had been guilty in yielding so readily to circumstances—placing himself so completely, not only in the power of his enemy, but in the wrong; in having foregone that fine sense of national, to say nothing of personal honour, without which the citizen merits not the name, and has no real claim upon the protection of his country. This sacrifice he had made without realizing, in its place, that very security of person and property, its pledged equivalent, which had been the price of its surrender. Bitterly, in that moment of self-examination, did he reproach himself with the unmanly error. Truly did he feel, by his present situation, that he who submits to tyranny arms it; and by not opposing it, weakens that power,—better principled, or with better courage than himself,—which battles with it to the last.
