ds on these jewels, and stowed them away in the pockets of
his coat and trousers, without opening the cases or untying the
packets; but he was soon interrupted in his work------

Footsteps resounded in the other room. He stopped short, frozen with
terror. But the noise having ceased, he was already imagining he had
been mistaken, when suddenly he distinctly heard a faint cry, or
rather a kind of feeble interrupted moan. At the end of a minute or
two, everything was again as silent as death. Raskolnikoff had seated
himself on the floor beside the trunk and was waiting, scarcely daring
to breathe; suddenly he bounded up, caught up the hatchet, and rushed
from the bedroom. In the center of the apartment, Elizabeth, a huge
bundle in her hands, stood gazing in a terror-stricken way at her dead
sister; white as a sheet, she did not seem to have the strength to
call out. On the sudden appearance of the murderer, she began to quake
in every limb, and nervous twitches passed over her face; she tried to
raise her arm, to open her mouth, but she was unable to utter the
least cry, and, slowly retreating, her gaze still riveted on
Raskolnikoff, she sought refuge in a corner. The poor woman drew back
in perfect silence, as though she had no breath left in her body. The
young man rushed upon her, brandishing the hatchet; the wretched
creature's lips assumed the doleful expression peculiar to quite young
children when, beginning to feel frightened of something, they gaze
fixedly at the object which has raised their alarm, and are on the
point of crying out. Terror had so completely stupefied this
unfortunate Elizabeth, that, though threatened by the hatchet, she did
not even think of protecting her face by holding her hands before her
head, with that mechanical gesture which the instinct of
self-preservation prompts on such occasions. She scarcely raised her
left arm, and extended it slowly in the direction of the murderer, as
thought to keep him off. The hatchet penetrated her skull, laying it
open from the upper part of the forehead to the crown. Elizabeth fell
down dead. No longer aware of what he did, Raskolnikoff took the
bundle from his victim's hand, then dropped it and ran to the
anteroom.

He was more and more terrified, especially after this second murder,
entirely unpremeditated by him. He was in a hurry to be gone; had he
then been in a state to see things more clearly, had he only been able
to form an idea of the difficu