 the discord
and dejection which occupied his own mind.
    At first, when we received intelligence at any time of the place to which
Mr. Falkland had withdrawn himself, some person of his household, Mr. Collins or
myself, but most generally myself, as I was always at home, and always in the
received sense of that word at leisure, went to him to persuade him to return.
But after a few experiments we thought it advisable to desist, and to leave him
to prolong his absence or to terminate it as might happen to suit his own
inclination. Mr. Collins, whose grey hairs and long services seemed to give him
a sort of right to be importunate, sometimes succeeded; though even in that case
there was nothing that could sit more uneasily upon Mr. Falkland than this
insinuation, as if he wanted a guardian to take care of him, or as if he were
in, or in danger of falling into, a state in which he would be incapable of
deliberately controling his own words and actions. At one time he would sullenly
yield to his humble, venerable friend, murmuring grievously at the constraint
that was put upon him, but without spirit enough even to complain of it with
energy. At another time, even though complying, he would suddenly burst out in a
paroxysm of resentment. Upon these occasions there was something inconceivably,
savagely terrible in his anger, that gave to the person against whom it was
directed the most humiliating and insupportable sensations. Me he always treated
at these times with fierceness, and drove me from him with a vehemence, lofty,
emphatical and sustained beyond any thing of which I should have thought human
nature to be capable. These sallies seemed always to constitute a sort of crisis
in his indisposition; and, whenever he was induced to such a premature return,
he would fall immediately after into a state of the most melancholy inactivity,
in which he usually continued for two or three days. It was by an obstinate
fatality that, whenever I saw Mr. Falkland in these deplorable situations, and
particularly when I lighted upon him after having sought him among the rocks and
precipices, pale, emaciated, solitary and haggard, the suggestion would
continually recur to me, in spite of inclination, in spite of persuasion and in
spite of evidence, Surely this man is a murderer!
 

                                   Chapter V

It was in one of the lucid intervals, as I may term them, that occurred during
this period, that a peasant was brought before him, in his character of a
justice of peace, upon an accusation of having murdered his fellow. As
