o in the rubbish
here, there was not one now. I then groped in the other corner with the
same result--nowhere could I find a skull. Three or four fragments of
leg and back-bones were all I could collect, and with these I was forced
to be content.

'Taking them in my hand, I crossed the road, and got round behind the
inn, where the couch heap was still smouldering. Keeping behind the
hedge, I could see the heads of the three or four men who watched the
spot.

'Standing in this place I took the bones, and threw them one by one over
the hedge and over the men's heads into the smoking embers. When the
bones had all been thrown, I threw the keys; last of all I threw the
watch.

'I then returned home as I had gone, and went to bed once more, just as
the dawn began to break. I exulted--"Cytherea is mine again!"

'At breakfast-time I thought, "Suppose the cupboard should by some
unlikely chance get moved to-day!"

'I went to the mason's yard hard by, while the men were at breakfast,
and brought away a shovelful of mortar. I took it into the outhouse,
again shifted the cupboard, and plastered over the mouth of the oven
behind. Simply pushing the cupboard back into its place, I waited for
the next night that I might bury the body, though upon the whole it was
in a tolerably safe hiding-place.

'When the night came, my nerves were in some way weaker than they had
been on the previous night. I felt reluctant to touch the body. I went
to the outhouse, but instead of opening the oven, I firmly drove in
the shoulder-nails that held the cupboard to the wall. "I will bury her
to-morrow night, however," I thought.

'But the next night I was still more reluctant to touch her. And my
reluctance increased, and there the body remained. The oven was, after
all, never likely to be opened in my time.

'I married Cytherea Graye, and never did a bridegroom leave the church
with a heart more full of love and happiness, and a brain more fixed on
good intentions, than I did on that morning.

'When Cytherea's brother made his appearance at the hotel in
Southampton, bearing his strange evidence of the porter's disclosure, I
was staggered beyond expression. I thought they had found the body.
"Am I to be apprehended and to lose her even now?" I mourned. I saw
my error, and instantly saw, too, that I must act externally like an
honourable man. So at his request I yielded her up to him, and meditated
on several schemes for enabling me to claim