ar to the wall and caught the
sound of a prolonged and painful stir within, I only thought of
following the movements of madame, who, I was now sure, had left her bed
and was dragging herself, with what difficulty and distress I could but
faintly judge by the involuntary groans which now and then left her,
across the floor toward the door, the key of which I presently heard
turn.

This done, a heavy silence followed, then the slow, dragging sound began
again, interrupted now by weary pants and heavy sobs that at first
chilled me and then shook me with such fear that it was with difficulty
that I could retain my place against the wall. She was crawling in my
direction, and at each instant I heard the pants grow louder.

I gradually withdrew, step by step, till I found myself pressed up
against the wall in the remotest corner I could find. And here was I
standing, enveloped in darkness and dread, when the sounds changed to
that of a shuddering, rushing noise which I had heard once before in my
life, and from a narrow gap through which the faint light in the room
beyond dimly shone in a thread of lesser darkness, the aperture grew,
till I could feel rather than see her form, crawling, not walking,
through the opening, and hear, distinct enough, her horrible, gurgling
tones as she murmured:

"I shall have to grope for what I want--touch it, feel it, for I cannot
see. O God! O God! What horror! What punishment!"

Nearer, nearer over the floor she came, dragging her useless limb behind
her. Her outstretched arm groped, groped about the floor, while I stood
trembling and agonized with horror till her hand touched the skirt of my
dress, when, with a great shriek of suddenly liberated feeling, I pushed
her from me, and crying out, "Murderess! do you seek the bones of your
victim?" I flung open the door against which I stood and let the light
from my own room stream in upon us two.

Her face as I saw it at that moment has never left my memory. She had
fallen in a heap at my first move, and now lay crushed before me, with
only her wide-staring eyes and shaking lips to tell me that she lived.

"You thought I did not know you," I burst forth. "You thought, because I
had never seen your face, you could come back here, bringing your
innocent daughter with you, and cast yourself into the very atmosphere
of your crime without awakening the suspicion of the woman whose house
you had made a sepulcher of for so many years. But crime