every sound in the sick-room above. Ten,--eleven,--twelve,--one,--sounded
from the clock in the dining-room on the other side of the hall.
For three hours has she crouched there, but the opportunity
she expected has not yet come. The moon was setting and deep
darkness beginning to envelop the earth, when, just as she was about to
steal forth and regain her cabin unobserved, the door above her head
opened, and the young negro nurse, still half-asleep, came forth, stood
for a moment upon the topmost step to recover her senses, and then, with
the wailing infant in her arms, descended and passed round the corner of
the house. She had barely disappeared when the murderess crept from her
lair, and, swift and noiseless as a serpent or a cat, glided up the
steps through the open door, and in another moment had again concealed
herself beneath the leaves of a large table that stood in the hall
close to the door of the sick-room, which, standing ajar, gave her an
opportunity of studying once more the situation of things within. In the
corner farthest from her lurking-place stood the bed on which her master
was slumbering, concealing with its curtains the front-window against
which it was placed. At the foot of this, under the other front-window,
was the pallet of the nurse, and midway between it and the door through
which she peered was the low trundle-bed of the sick child, on which at
this moment lay the mother,--soon to become a mother again; while at
the farther end of the room a candle was burning dimly upon the hearth.
Thus, for half an hour, the murderess crouched within a few feet of her
victim and watched, noting every circumstance with the eye of a beast of
prey about to spring. At the end of that time the nurse returned, placed
the quieted child beside its mother, and, closing the door, retired to
her own pallet, whence her loud breathing almost immediately told that
she was asleep. Still with bated breath the mulatto waited, stooping
with her ear at the keyhole till the regular respirations of the mother
and the softened panting of the little invalid assured her that all
was safe. Then, at last, turning the handle of the latch silently and
gradually, she glided into the room and stood by the side of her victim.

The whole range of imaginative literature cannot furnish an incident
of more absorbing interest; nor can the whole history of the theatre
exhibit a situation of more tremendous scenical power than was presented