Chapter 54 - Page 2

infesting my breast in spite of me.
Every time the lightning glared I caught my breath, and judged I was gone.
In my terror and misery, I meanly began to suggest other boys,
and mention acts of theirs which were wickeder than mine, and peculiarly
needed punishment--and I tried to pretend to myself that I was simply
doing this in a casual way, and without intent to divert the heavenly
attention to them for the purpose of getting rid of it myself.
With deep sagacity I put these mentions into the form of sorrowing
recollections and left-handed sham-supplications that the sins of those
boys might be allowed to pass unnoticed--'Possibly they may repent.'
'It is true that Jim Smith broke a window and lied about it--
but maybe he did not mean any harm. And although Tom Holmes
says more bad words than any other boy in the village,
he probably intends to repent--though he has never said he would.
And whilst it is a fact that John Jones did fish a little
on Sunday, once, he didn't really catch anything but only just one
small useless mud-cat; and maybe that wouldn't have been so awful
if he had thrown it back--as he says he did, but he didn't. Pity
but they would repent of these dreadful things--and maybe they will
yet.'

But while I was shamefully trying to draw attention to these poor chaps--
who were doubtless directing the celestial attention to me at the same moment,
though I never once suspected that--I had heedlessly left my candle burning.
It was not a time to neglect even trifling precautions. There was no occasion
to add anything to the facilities for attracting notice to me--so I put
the light out.

It was a long night to me, and perhaps the most distressful one I ever spent.
I endured agonies of remorse for sins which I knew I had committed,
and for others which I was not certain about, yet was sure that they had
been set down against me in a book by an angel who was wiser than I and did
not trust such important matters to memory. It struck me, by and by,
that I had been making a most foolish and calamitous mistake, in one respect:
doubtless I had not only made my own destruction sure by directing attention
to those other boys, but had already accomplished theirs!--Doubtless the
lightning had stretched them all dead in their beds by this time!
The anguish and the fright which this thought gave me made my previous
sufferings seem trifling by comparison.

Things had become truly serious. I resolved to turn over
a new leaf instantly; I also resolved to connect myself
with the church the next day, if I survived to see its
sun appear. I resolved to cease from sin in all its forms,
and to lead a high and blameless life for ever after.
I would be punctual at church and Sunday-school; visit the