Justice being thus done,the commission,in a childish horror,turned to flee.But their victim recalled them to his side.'You need not run away now,'he said.'You have done this thing to me.
Stay.'He was some twenty minutes dying,and his murderers sat with him the while:a scene for Shakespeare.All the stages of a violent death,the blood,the failing voice,the decomposing features,the changed hue,are thus present in the memory of Mr.
Corpse;and since he studied them in the brother he betrayed,he has some reason to reflect on the possibilities of treachery.Iwas never more sure of anything than the tragic quality of the king's thoughts;and yet I had but the one sight of him at unawares.I had once an errand for his ear.It was once more the hour of the siesta;but there were loiterers abroad,and these directed us to a closed house on the bank of the canal where Tebureimoa lay unguarded.We entered without ceremony,being in some haste.He lay on the floor upon a bed of mats,reading in his Gilbert Island Bible with compunction.On our sudden entrance the unwieldy man reared himself half-sitting so that the Bible rolled on the floor,stared on us a moment with blank eyes,and,having recognised his visitors,sank again upon the mats.So Eglon looked on Ehud.