CHAPTER XXXIII.
A PATRIOT'S REWARD.
I never shall forget one evening's walk, as Crossthwaite and I strode
back together from the Convention. We had walked on some way arm in arm
in silence, under the crushing and embittering sense of having something
to conceal--something, which if those who passed us so carelessly in
the street had known--! It makes a villain and a savage of a man, that
consciousness of a dark, hateful secret. And it was a hateful one!--a
dark and desperate necessity, which we tried to call by noble names, that
faltered on our lips as we pronounced them; for the spirit of God was not
in us; and instead of bright hope, and the clear fixed lodestar of duty,
weltered in our imaginations a wild possible future of tumult, and flame,
and blood.
"It must be done!--it shall be done!--it will be done!" burst out John, at
last, in that positive, excited tone, which indicated a half disbelief of
his own words. "I've been reading Macerone on street-warfare; and I see the
way as clear as day."
I felt nothing but the dogged determination of despair.
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