has faded from my memory, after thirteen
years. I slept for several hours, and
remember distinctly what I was dreaming of
when the chillness of the room began to
awaken me. A sensation of coldness
penetrated into my dreams; I became conscious
of some external power gradually drawing me
out of my slumber; and I instinctively
resisted it, clinging to sleep to the last. But
the recollection of where I was slowly
returned, with a comfortless sense of a dark
fireless room, and a depression of spirits. My
eyes opened gradually; and, although the lamp
was extinguished, I saw, by the faint light of
the window, the countenance of my companion
staring intently at me from the opposite side
of the table. His arms were lying upon the
table, and his chin resting upon them; his eyes
were almost on a level with mine, as I sat in
the low chair. The idea that he had been
about to attack me, and that, while closely
scrutinising my features to see if I were asleep,
he had been suddenly arrested by my eyes
opening, struck me in an instant, and I started
to my feet.

"What!" I said, "sitting awake, without
fire or light?"

My companion did not answer.

"Brooding over troubles again?" I
continued, in an assumed tone of raillery.
"Forgetting that you are in the dark, and how
cold it is?"

He still kept silent, and without making
the slightest movement.

I stooped down to the hearth, and raked
the embers with a match; they were mere
ashes. Taking my lamp from the table,
I struck a light, and endeavoured to ignite it;
but the wick was burnt away, and the oil
exhausted. The match going out, left me
again in darkness. I called my companion
by name, without arousing him. With a dread
of going nearer to him, I stood undecided.
"He is in a fit; it may save his life to
bleed him," said I, temporising with myself,
"I will search for my lancets," and I groped
my way about, and felt among my apparatus
for some time, before I remembered having
left my case upon the table when cleaning
them.

Then came a conviction that my visitor
had destroyed himself. I hastened to arouse
the house; but stopped suddenly, and closed
the door again, for the idea that I might
be accused of murder occurred to me.
Under different circumstances I might at
once have rejected such an apprehension;
but, weakened by long illness, depressed by
previous excitement, and overwrought by
superstitious fancies, I saw it almost as
a certainty. I knew how ingeniously the
law will sometimes turn the slightest evidence
against the accused, and I recollected the
unlucky circumstance of my having threatened
him with vengeance, in the presence of
many who, no doubt, remembered the fact.

I approached the table again. There was
just sufficient light to distinguish an object
quite close; and as I went near to him upon
the side next the window, I saw immediately
the truth of my suspicion. He had inflicted
upon himself a deep wound in the side of the
neck; and his arms sinking on the table, his
chin had fallen upon them, in the attitude
in which I had first seen him. I found my
instrument-case upon the table; and raising
him slightly, I discovered one of my lancets
open in his hand. His face and hands were
cold. Setting him up in the chair, I felt for
his pulse, and found it stopped.

In this terrible situation, and while still
sustaining him in my arms, the danger
which threatened me presented itself so
vividly that I became half paralysed. The
previous quarrel, the instrument being my
property, the wound itself being of an
unusual kind, and such as only one
acquainted with surgery would be supposed to
inflict—all this seemed to me evidence
sufficient to convict me. How many murders
have been committed from apparently weaker
motives?  A murder is in itself a monstrosity
in the history of humanity, and supposes in
its author a man not governed by common
principles of reason. Is the folly of the act
ever taken as an argument of innocence?
Most men judging from their own natures,
as they are accustomed to do in ordinary
matters, would decide every murder to be
improbable; but they know, notwithstanding,
that such crimes are frequent, and will readily
believe them, however unnatural. These were
my thoughts as I stood there at that moment.
But I had unconsciously added a sign of guilt
still more to be feared than any I had
considered: in my agitation I had taken no care
to avoid contact with blood; and I now
discovered that one of my cuffs was wet, and I
did not doubt that there were traces of blood
on other parts of my clothes.

To give an alarm now; and, agitated as I
was, to maintain the truth of my strange
story, seemed in my imagination to be certain
destruction. My fear urged me irresistibly
to fly. I did not know what was the hour:
the glimmer of light might be the first
indication of dawn, or the light of the moon
behind the clouds. My wild intention was
to select as many necessary articles as I
could carry, to lock my door, and to depart at
once, in the hope of reaching the frontier on
foot, and getting next perhaps to England,
where I could learn the result of the
discovery of the body.

But, in that moment, as I stood hesitating,
I suddenly felt that the window was darkened;
and, looking round, I saw with terror, at only
a few yards distance, the figure of a man,
intently watching me through the glass. I
could not be mistaken; for the sky behind
made his outline distinctly visible. He
remained still for a moment, then moved from
one side to the other, as if trying to ascertain
what object I concealed behind me; but, in