he wintry evening now
darkened round them, and the light from the torch-bearers, who met them
at the cavern, cast forth its red and lurid flare at the mouth of the
chasm. One of these torches Walter himself seized, and his was the first
step that entered the gloomy passage. At this place and time, Houseman,
who till then, throughout their short journey, had seemed to have
recovered a sort of dogged self-possession, recoiled, and the big
drops of fear or agony fell fast from his brow. He was dragged forward
forcibly into the cavern; and now as the space filled, and the torches
flickered against the grim walls, glaring on faces which caught, from
the deep and thrilling contagion of a common sentiment, one common
expression, it was not well possible for the wildest imagination to
conceive a scene better fitted for the unhallowed burial-place of the
murdered dead.

The eyes of all now turned upon Houseman; and he, after twice vainly
endeavoring to speak, for the words died inarticulate and choked within
him, advancing a few steps, pointed towards a spot on which, the next
moment, fell the concentrated light of every torch. An indescribable
and universal murmur, and then a breathless silence, ensued. On the spot
which Houseman had indicated, with the head placed to the right, lay
what once had been a human body!

"Can you swear," said the priest, solemnly, as he turned to Houseman,
"that these are the bones of Clarke?"

"Before God, I can swear it!" replied Houseman, at length finding his
voice.

"MY FATHER!" broke from Walter's lips as he sank upon his knees; and
that exclamation completed the awe and horror which prevailed in the
breasts of all present. Stung by a sense of the danger he had drawn upon
himself, and despair and excitement restoring, in some measure, not
only his natural hardihood, but his natural astuteness, Houseman, here
mastering his emotions, and making that effort which he was afterwards
enabled to follow up with an advantage to himself of which he could not
then have dreamed,--Houseman, I say, cried aloud,

"But I did not do the deed; I am not the murderer."

"Speak out! Whom do you accuse?" said the curate. Drawing his breath
hard, and setting his teeth as with some steeled determination, Houseman
replied,--

"The murderer is Eugene Aram!"

"Aram!" shouted Walter, starting to his feet: "O God, thy hand hath
directed me hither!" And suddenly and at once sense left him, and he
fell, as if a s