342 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
She fell back upon her pillow, and, as I started to my feet, 
a strange, dull cry came from the husband! 
She was dead! I turned my head in horror from the 
realization of the scene, and there was Tom, crouching close 
beside me, with his eyes rolled up in such an expression of 
horror and sympathy, that I was even more profoundly moved. 
He had evidently crept in, and been listening to everything 
she said ! 
Poor Tom! He buried this strange woman with many 
tears, and then we took the old man back to the Planter’s 
house, with all his wheels and models; but he soon fell into 
idiocy, and died not long after, leaving his life’s labor in the 
hands of strangers, to come to nothing /—as all attempts must 
do at asserting the prerogative of Divinity Himself—whose 
life is the only perpetual motion that can exist in the Universe! 
Here was a sad and stern first lesson of the presumption 
which goeth aside in the confidence of its own strength to 
search after the “strange gods,”—yet, alas, it was in vain 
for me, as I only came forth from this experience a more 
cold and impious doubter. 
