—I'll satisfy you: go. Go! and never let me
see your hang-dog face again!"

"You surely do not intend to turn me out
of doors, uncle," I faltered.

"March, bag and baggage. If you are
here a minute longer I'll call the police.
Go!" And he pointed to the door.

"But where am I to go?" I asked.

"Go and beg," said my uncle; "go and
cringe to your dear Uncle Morbus. Go and rot."

So saying he opened the door, kicked my
trunk into the hall, thrust me out of the room
and into the street,and pushed my portmanteau
after me, without my making the slightest
resistance. He slammed the door in my face,
and left me in the open street, at twelve
o'clock at night.

I slept that night at a coffee-shop. I had
a few shillings in my pocket; and, next
morning I took a lodging at, I think, four
shillings a week, in a court, somewhere up a
back street between Gray's Inn and Leather
Lane, Holborn. My room was at the top
of the house. The court below swarmed
with dirty, ragged children. My lodging was
a back garret; and, when I opened the
window I could only see a narrow strip of sky,
and a foul heap of sooty roofs, chimney-pots
and leads, with the great dingy brick tower
of a church towering above all. Where the
body of the church was I never knew.

I wrote letter after letter to my uncles
and to Mary, but never received a line
in answer. I wandered about the streets
all day, feeding on saveloys and penny loaves.
I went to my wretched bed by daylight,
and groaned for darkness to come; then
groaned that it might grow light again.
I knew no one to whom I could apply for
employment, and knew no means by which
I could obtain it. The house I lived in
and the neighbourhood were full of foreign
refugees and street mountebanks whose jargon
I could not understand. My little stock of
money slowly dwindled away; and, in ten days,
my mind was ripe for suicide. You must
serve an apprenticeship to acquire that ripeness.
Crowded streets, utter desolation and
friendlessness in them, scanty food, and the
knowledge that, when you have spent all your
money and sold your coat and waistcoat, you
must starve, are the best masters. They produce
that frame of mind which coroners' juries call
temporary insanity. I determined to die. I
expended my last coin in purchasing laudanum
at different chemists' shops—a penny-
worth at each; which, I said, I wanted for the
toothache; for I knew they would not supply
a large quantity to a stranger. I took my
dozen phials home, and poured their contents
into a broken mug that stood on my wash-
hand stand. I locked the door, sat down
on my fatal black portmanteau, and tried to
pray; but I could not.

It was about nine in the evening, in the
summer time, and the room was in that state
of semi-obscurity you call " between the
lights." While I sat on my black portmanteau,
I heard through my garret window,
which was wide open, a loud noise; a confusion
of angry voices, in which I could not
distinguish one word I could comprehend. The
noise was followed by a pistol-shot. I hear
it now, as distinctly as I heard it twenty
years ago; and then another. As I looked
out of the window, I saw a pair of hands
covered with blood, clutching the sill, and I
heard a voice imploring help for God's sake!
Scarcely knowing what I did, I drew up
from the leads below and into the room the
body of a man, whose face was one mass of
blood—like a crimson mask. He stood upright
on the floor when I had helped him in; his
face glaring at me like the spot one sees after
gazing too long at the sun. Then he began
to stagger; and went reeling about the room,
catching at the window curtain, the table, the
wall, and leaving traces of his blood wherever
he went—I following him in an agony—until
he fell face-foremost on the bed.

I lit a candle as well as I could. He was
quite dead. His features were so scorched,
and mangled, and drenched, that not one
trait was able to be distinguished. The pistol
must have been discharged full in his face,
for some of his long black hair was burned off.
He held, clasped in his left hand, a pistol
which evidently had been recently discharged.

I sat by the side of this horrible object
twenty minutes or more waiting for the alarm
which I thought must necessarily follow, and
resolving what I should do. But all was as
silent as the grave. No one in the house
seemed to have heard the pistol shot, and no
one without seemed to have heeded it. I
looked from the window; but the dingey mass
of roofs and chimneys had grown black with
night and I could perceive nothing moving.
Only, as I held my candle out of the window it
mirrored itself dully in a pool of blood on the
leads below.

I began to think I might be accused of the
murder of this unknown man. I, who had
so lately courted a violent death, began to fear
it, and to shake like an aspen at the thought
of the gallows. Then I tried to persuade
myself that it was all a horrible dream;
but there, on the bed, was the dreadful dead
man in his blood, and all about the room
were the marks of his gory fingers.

I began to examine the body more
minutely. The dead man was almost exactly of
my height and stoutness. Of his age I could
not judge. His hair was long and black like
mine. In one of his pockets I found a pocket-
book, containing a mass of closely-written
sheets of very thin paper, in a character
utterly incomprehensible to me; moreover,
there was a roll of English bank-notes to
a very considerable amount. In his waist-
coat pocket was a gold watch; and, in a
silken girdle round his waist, were two
hundred English sovereigns and louis d'ors.

What fiend stood at my elbow while I