t a little something in her neck--did you hear it? There's the
death-rattle, the last smothery complicated gasp--what, didn't you hear
that?

And the devil congratulated Simon on his victory.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE REWARD.

TILL the wretch had done the deed, he scarcely knew that it was
doing. It was a horrid, mad excitement, where the soul had spread its
wings upon the whirlwind, and heeded not whither it was hurried. A
terrible necessity had seemed to spur him onwards all the while, and
one thing so succeeded to another, that he scarce could stop at any but
the first. From the moment he had hidden in the shower-bath (but for
God's interposing mercy), his doom appeared to have been
sealed--robbery, murder, false witness, and--damnation!

Crime is the rushing rapid, which, but for some kind miracle, inevitably
carries on through circling eddies, and a foamy swinging tide, to the
cataract of death and wo: haste, poor fisherman of Erie, paddle hard
back, stem the torrent, cling to the shore, hold on tight by this
friendly bough; know you not whither the headlong current drives? hear
you not the roar of many waters, the maddening rush as of an ocean
disenthralled? feel you not the earth trembling at the thunder--see you
not the heaven clouded o'er with spray? Helpless wretch--thy frail canoe
has leapt that dizzy water-cliff, Niagara!

But if, in doing that fell deed, madness raged upon the minutes, now
that it was done--all still, all calm, all quiet, Terror held the
hour-glass of Time. There lay the corpse, motionless, though coiled and
cramped in the attitude of struggling agony; and the murderer gazed upon
his victim with a horror most intense. Fly! fly!--he dared not stop to
think: fly! fly! any whither--as you are--wait for nothing; fly! thou
caitiff, for thy life! So he caught up the blood-bought spoils, and was
fumbling with shaky fingers at the handle of the garden-door, when the
unseen tempter whispered in his ear,

"I say, Simon, did not your aunt die of apoplexy?"

O, kind and wise suggestion! O, lightsome, tranquillizing thought!
Thanks! thanks! thanks!--And if the arch fiend had revealed himself in
person at the moment, Simon would have worshipped at his feet.

"But," and as he communed with his own black heart, there needed now no
devil for his prompter--"if this matter is to be believed, I must
contrive a little that it may look likelier. Let me see:--yes, we must
lay all tidy, and the old wi