n expression of guilty horror to all his looks,
and, like a man walking in his sleep under the temptation of some
dreadful dream, he moved with fixed eyes towards the bed, and looking at
the corpse, gabbled in hideous laughter, and then wept and tore his hair
like a distracted woman or a child. Then he stooped down as he would
kiss the face, but staggered back, and, covering his eyes with his
hands, uttered such a groan as is sometimes heard rending the sinner's
breast when the avenging Furies are upon him in his dreams. All who
heard it felt that he was guilty; and there was a fierce cry through the
room of, "Make him touch the body, and if he be the murderer, it will
bleed!"--"Fear not, Ludovic, to touch it, my boy," said his father;
"bleed afresh it will not, for thou art innocent; and savage though now
they be who once were proud to be thy friends, even they will believe
thee guiltless when the corpse refuses to bear witness against thee, and
not a drop leaves its quiet heart!" But his son spake not a word, nor
did he seem to know that his father had spoken; but he suffered himself
to be led passively towards the bed. One of the bystanders took his hand
and placed it on the naked breast, when out of the corners of the
teeth-clenched mouth, and out of the swollen nostrils, two or three
blood-drops visibly oozed; and a sort of shrieking shout declared the
sacred faith of all the crowd in the dreadful ordeal. "What body is
this? 'tis all over blood!" said the prisoner, looking with an idiot
vacancy on the faces that surrounded him. But now the sheriff of the
county entered the room, along with some officers of justice, and he was
spared any further shocks from that old saving superstition. His wrists
soon after were manacled. These were all the words he had uttered since
he recovered from the fit; and he seemed now in a state of stupor.

Ludovic Adamson, after examination of witnesses who crowded against him
from many unexpected quarters, was committed that very Sabbath night to
prison on a charge of murder. On the Tuesday following, the remains of
Margaret Burnside were interred. All the parish were at the funeral. In
Scotland it is not customary for females to join in the last simple
ceremonies of death. But in this case they did; and all her scholars, in
the same white dresses in which they used to walk with her at their head
into the kirk on Sabbaths, followed the bier. Alice and little Ann were
there, nearest the c