tome
he would never rise. As this thought came over me, I felt a stifling
sensation in my throat, tears started in my eyes, and my heart almost
wavered from its purpose. But the bent bow had only relaxed for a
single instant; it returned again to its strong and abiding tension.

"I was alone in my chamber once more. A single lamp burned gloomily
before me; and on the table at my side stood a glass of laudanum. I had
prepared everything. I had written my last letter, and had now only to
drink the fatal draught, and lie down to my last sleep. I heard the old
village clock strike eleven. 'I may as well do it now as ever,' I said
mentally, and my hand moved towards the glass. But my courage failed
me; my hand shook, and some moments elapsed before I could sufficiently
quiet my nerves to lift the glass containing the fatal liquid. The
blood ran cold upon my heart, and my brain reeled, as again and again
I lifted the poison to my closed lips. 'It must be done,' thought I,
'I must drink it.' With a desperate effort I unlocked my clenched teeth
and the deed was done!

"'O God, have mercy upon me!' I murmured, as the empty glass fell from
my hand. I threw myself upon the bed, and awaited the awful
termination. An age of unutterable misery seemed crowded into a brief
moment. All the events of my past life, a life, as it then seemed to
me, made up of folly and crime, rose distinct before me, like accusing
witnesses, as if the recording angel had unrolled to my view the full
and black catalogue of my unnumbered sins:--

'O'er the soul Winters of memory seemed to roll,
And gather, in that drop of time,
A life of pain, an age of crime.'

"I felt that what I had done was beyond recall; and the Phantom of Death,
as it drew nearer, wore an aspect darker and more terrible. I thought
of the coffin, the shroud, and the still and narrow grave, into whose
dumb and frozen solitude none but the gnawing worm intrudes. And then
my thoughts wandered away into the vagueness and mystery of eternity, I
was rushing uncalled for into the presence of a just and pure God, with
a spirit unrepenting, unannealed! And I tried to pray and could not;
for a heaviness, a dull strange torpor crept over me. Consciousness
went out slowly. 'This is death,' thought I; yet I felt no pain,
nothing save a weary drowsiness, against which I struggled in vain.

"My next sensations were those of calmness,