emerged, so that with their weight the bell was beginning to sway.

Hark! it had swayed till the clapper had touched the bell. The sound
was but a tiny one, but the bell was only beginning to sway, and it
would increase.

At the sound the Judge, who had been keeping his eyes fixed on
Malcolmson, looked up, and a scowl of diabolical anger overspread his
face. His eyes fairly glowed like hot coals, and he stamped his foot
with a sound that seemed to make the house shake. A dreadful peal of
thunder broke overhead as he raised the rope again, whilst the rats
kept running up and down the rope as though working against time. This
time, instead of throwing it, he drew close to his victim, and held
open the noose as he approached. As he came closer there seemed
something paralysing in his very presence, and Malcolmson stood rigid
as a corpse. He felt the Judge's icy fingers touch his throat as he
adjusted the rope. The noose tightened--tightened. Then the Judge,
taking the rigid form of the student in his arms, carried him over and
placed him standing in the oak chair, and stepping up beside him, put
his hand up and caught the end of the swaying rope of the alarm bell.
As he raised his hand the rats fled squeaking, and disappeared through
the hole in the ceiling. Taking the end of the noose which was round
Malcolmson's neck he tied it to the hanging-bell rope, and then
descending pulled away the chair.

* * * * *

When the alarm bell of the Judge's House began to sound a crowd soon
assembled. Lights and torches of various kinds appeared, and soon a
silent crowd was hurrying to the spot. They knocked loudly at the
door, but there was no reply. Then they burst in the door, and poured
into the great dining-room, the doctor at the head.

There at the end of the rope of the great alarm bell hung the body of
the student, and on the face of the Judge in the picture was a
malignant smile.

The Squaw

Nurnberg at the time was not so much exploited as it has been since
then. Irving had not been playing _Faust_, and the very name of the
old town was hardly known to the great bulk of the travelling public.
My wife and I being in the second week of our honeymoon, naturally
wanted someone else to join our party, so that when the cheery
stranger, Elias P. Hutcheson, hailing from Isthmian City, Bleeding
Gulch, Maple Tree County, Neb. turned up at the station at Frankfort,
and casually remarked t