r or distorts his mental
vision, but I do not think it is thus with me. Such may be the case when
death comes slowly and the mental faculties are impaired, but when one
contemplates it, as I do now, in the full possession of all my
faculties, it is rather, I think, that a prescience of the unknown, a
touch of omniscience comes to a man and he knows more than other men
know.

"As I sit here with death beside me, waiting for me, I seem to see
things as I never saw them till now, and had I the chance I might wish
to live on, but it is too late; to-morrow would bring me ruin and
disgrace. Better death than that. It has been my philosophy that death
was not an evil, but a solution for evils, and I will abide by it.

"It grows late and this letter must catch the mail. Let me then tell you
quickly what I did that night, and how I came to do it, and so end all.

"I drew the Winters will and at the suggestion of White, who sought me
for the purpose, I made his bequest one hundred thousand dollars instead
of ten thousand dollars, and for doing so, I received a share. I needed
money, and when a man at my age needs money it is hard. The matter would
have ended there had White been less remorseful, but he grew daily more
morbid over it, till I knew that in spite of all I could do, he would
some day confess. Still I had no thought of killing him, and when I left
his house that night and fixed the catches on the doors so that I could
re-enter, and when I parted with you and retraced my steps, I had still
no thought of killing him. I meant only to reason with him and dissuade
him as I had done a dozen times before, but when I entered his room and
found myself alone in the safety of the night and saw him asleep with
the heaviness of drunken stupor and the means ready to my hand, the
thought came to me and it was the easier and the surer way.

"Then I put on the cap and ulster and gathered up the bills that were on
the table and went out. I left the ulster at Stanton's house, but forgot
the cap, and then, seeking the nearest elevated station, went home. In
the morning when I returned to White's rooms, I took the opportunity
while I was by the body to drop the cap unseen behind the divan. I knew
that it, as the other circumstances I had created, would but serve to
further involve the case when it should be investigated. That is all.

"I might tell more of the impulses that swayed me, and of my feelings on
that night and since, but it