untaken the medicine that had been prescribed.
He had retired into his sleeping-room,--a small apartment opening
out of his study, and which, for some time past, in consideration
of the delicate state of his wife's health, and the irregularity of
his own hours of study, he occupied at night alone,--and lain
sometime upon the bed. The horrible trance, more horrible than
ever, must have returned. All that can now be known of what
followed is to be gathered from the facts, that next morning his
body, half dressed, was found lying lifeless on the floor, the feet
upon the study rug, the chest pierced with the ball of the revolver
pistol, which was found lying in the bath that stood close by.[2]
The deadly bullet had perforated the left lung, grazed the heart,
cut through the pulmonary artery at its root, and lodged in the
rib in the right side. Death must have been instantaneous. The
servant by whom the body was first discovered, acting with singular
discretion, gave no alarm, but went instantly in search of the
doctor and minister; and on the latter the melancholy duty was
devolved of breaking the fearful intelligence to that now
broken-hearted widow, over whose bitter Borrow it becomes us to
draw the veil. The body was lifted and laid upon the bed. We saw it
there a few hours afterwards. The head lay back sideways on the
pillow. There was the massive brow, the firm-set, manly features,
we had so often looked upon admiringly, just as we had lately seen
them,--no touch nor trace upon them of disease,--nothing but that
overspread pallor of death to distinguish them from what they had
been. But the expression of that countenance in death will live in
our memory forever. Death by gunshot wounds is said to leave no
trace of suffering behind; and never was there a face of the dead
freer from all shadow of pain, or grief, or conflict, than that of
our dear departed friend. And as we bent over it, and remembered
the troubled look it sometimes had in life, and thought what must
have been the sublimely terrific expression that it wore at the
moment when the fatal deed was done, we could not help thinking
that it lay there to tell us, in that expression of unruffled,
majestic repose that sat upon every feature, what we so assuredly
believe, that the spirit had pass