been originally very indefinite; but, by slow degrees--degrees nearly
imperceptible, and which for a long time my Reason struggled to reject
as fanciful--it had, at length, assumed a rigorous distinctness of
outline. It was now the representation of an object that I shudder to
name--and for this, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have
rid myself of the monster _had I dared_--it was now, I say, the image
of a hideous--of a ghastly thing--of the GALLOWS!--oh, mournful and
terrible engine of Horror and of Crime--of Agony and of Death!

And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity.
And _a brute beast _--whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed--_a
brute beast_ to work out for _me_--for me a man, fashioned in the image
of the High God--so much of insufferable wo! Alas! neither by day nor
by night knew I the blessing of Rest any more! During the former the
creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, I started, hourly,
from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of _the thing_
upon my face, and its vast weight--an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no
power to shake off--incumbent eternally upon my _heart!_

Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant
of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole
intimates--the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of
my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind;
while, from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury
to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas!
was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers.

One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the cellar
of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat
followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong,
exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my
wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a
blow at the animal which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal
had it descended as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of
my wife. Goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal,
I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She
fell dead upon the spot, without a groan.

This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with
entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I knew that I
co