If it would only be the end of us, why, then--" Emmeline turned away, and hid her face in her hands.
While this conversation was passing in the chamber, Legree, overcome with his carouse, had sunk to sleep in the room below.

Legree was not an habitual drunkard.

His coarse, strong nature craved, and could endure, a continual stimulation, that would have utterly wrecked and crazed a finer one.

But a deep, underlying spirit of cautiousness prevented his often yielding to appetite in such measure as to lose control of himself.
This night, however, in his feverish efforts to banish from his mind those fearful elements of woe and remorse which woke within him, he had indulged more than common; so that, when he had discharged his sable attendants, he fell heavily on a settle in the room, and was sound asleep.
O! how dares the bad soul to enter the shadowy world of sleep ?--that land whose dim outlines lie so fearfully near to the mystic scene of retribution! Legree dreamed.

In his heavy and feverish sleep, a veiled form stood beside him, and laid a cold, soft hand upon him.