throat, and countenanced
the dreadful thought of strangulation!

Secondly, a surgeon (one Mr. Eager, the Union doctor, a very young
personage, wrong withal and radical) maintained that this actual
strangulation might have been effected by the hands of the deceased
herself, in the paroxysm of a rush of blood to the brain; and he
fortified his wise position by the instance of a late statesman, who, he
averred, cut his throat with a pen-knife, to relieve himself of pressure
on the temples: while another surgeon--Stephen Cramp, he was farrier as
well, and had been, until lately, time out of mind, the village
AEsculapius, who looked with scorn on his pert rival, and opposed him
tooth and nail on all occasions--insisted that it was not only
physically impossible for poor Mrs. Quarles so to have strangled
herself, but more particularly that, if she had done so, she certainly
could not have laid herself out so decently afterwards; therefore, that
as some one else had kindly done the latter office for her, why not the
former too?

Thirdly, Sarah Stack, the still-room maid, deposed, that Mrs. Quarles
always locked her door before she went to bed, but that when she
(deponent) went to call her as usual on the fatal morning, the door was
just ajar; and so she found her dead: while parallel with this, tending
to implicate some domestic criminal, was to be placed the equally
uncommon fact, that the other door of Mrs. Quarles's room, leading to
the lawn, was open too:--be it known that Mrs. Quarles was a stout
woman, who could'nt abide to sleep up-stairs, for fear of fire;
moreover, that she was a nervous woman, who took extraordinary
precautions for her safety, in case of thieves. Thus, unaccountably
enough, the murderer, if there was any, was as likely to have come from
the outside, as from the in.

Fourthly, the murderer in this way is commonly a thief, and does the
deed for mammon-sake; but the new house-keeper, lately installed, made
her deposition, that, by inventories duly kept and entered--for her
honoured predecessor, rest her soul! had been a pattern of
regularity--all Mrs. Quarles's goods and personal chattels were found to
be safe and right in her room--some silver spoons among them too--ay,
and a silver tea-pot; while, as to other property in the house, with
every room full of valuables, nothing whatever was missing from the
lists, except, indeed, what was scarce worth mention (unless one must be
very exact), sundry cr