Even now, though the years have come and the years have gone since I
kept my lonely watch in River Hall, I start sometimes from sleep with a
great horror of darkness upon me, and a feeling that stealthily some one
is creeping through the silence to take my life!
15. CONCLUSION
I can remember the day and the hour as if it had all happened yesterday.
I can recall the view from the windows distinctly, as though time had
stood still ever since. There are no gardens under our windows in
Buckingham Street. Buckingham Gate stands the entrance to a desert of
mud, on which the young Arabs--shoeless, stockingless--are disporting
themselves. It is low water, and the river steamers keep towards the
middle arches of Waterloo. Up aloft the Hungerford Suspension rears
itself in mid air, and that spick-and-span new bridge, across which
trains run now ceaselessly, has not yet been projected. It is a bright
spring day. The sunshine falls upon the buildings on the Surrey side,
and lights them with a picturesque beauty to which they have not the
slightest title. A barge, laden with hay, is lying almost motionless in
the middle of the Thames.
There is, even in London, a great promise and hope about that pleasant
spring day, but for me life has held no promise, and the future no hope,
since that night when the mystery of River Hall was solved in my
presence, and out of his own mouth the murderer uttered his
condemnation.
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