; and he
would step more boldly, and bustle aloud among the contents of the shop,
and imitate, with elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy man at ease
in his own house.

But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one
portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on the
brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold on
his credulity. The neighbour hearkening with white face beside his
window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the
pavement--these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through the
brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But here,
within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched the
servant set forth sweet-hearting, in her poor best, 'out for the day'
written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course; and
yet, in the bulk of empty house above him, he could surely hear a stir of
delicate footing--he was surely conscious, inexplicably conscious of some
presence. Ay, surely; to every room and corner of the house his
imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless thing, and yet had
eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of himself; and yet again
behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired with cunning and hatred.

At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door which
still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small
and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down to
the ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the threshold
of the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness, did there
not hang wavering a shadow?

Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to beat
with a staff on the shop-door, accompanying his blows with shouts and
railleries in which the dealer was continually called upon by name.
Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no! he lay
quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows and
shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name, which would
once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm, had become an
empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted from his
knocking, and departed.

Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forth
from this accusing neighbourhood, to plunge into a bath of London
multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, t