If they left her behind, it would be avowing the murder. This
settled, they went to bed.
What to do, Karl did not know. He was naturally a stupid sort of lad,
and what little sense nature had given him, had been nearly beaten
out of him by harsh treatment. He had had a miserable life of it, and
had never found himself so comfortable as he was now with his aunt
and her husband. They were kind to him, because they wanted to make
use of him. He did not want to offend them, nor to leave them; for if
he did, he must return home again, which he dreaded above all things.
Yet there was something in him that recoiled against killing the
lady. Grossly ignorant as he was, scarcely knowing right from wrong,
it was not morality or religion that deterred him from the crime; he
had a very imperfect idea of the amount of the wickedness he would be
committing in taking away the life of a fellow-creature. Obedience
was the only virtue he had been taught; and what those in authority
over him had ordered him to do, he would have done without much
question.
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