rd--and my brother fell headlong to the ground.
The bullet had gone crashing through his skull. He never moved.

A revulsion of feeling instantly followed. All the love of former
years--all the tender passages of our boyhood--rushed through my brain
in an instant. I flew to him and raised him from the earth. At sight
of his pale face, beautiful in death, of his long bright locks dabbled
in warm blood, I shrieked in despair. A mother bewailing her first
born could not have felt her loss more keenly, or mourned it more
wildly. Two or three woodmen rushed to the spot. They saw, as they
supposed, the story at a glance. One of those accidents so common to
the careless use of firearms--and I was proverbially unacquainted with
their use--had produced the catastrophe. We were borne home, for I had
fainted, and was as cold and lifeless as my victim. What passed during
a day or two I scarcely remember. Something of strange people in the
house--of disconnected words of sympathy--of a coffin--a funeral--a
pilgrimage to the woodland cemetery, where my parents and my wife
slept--are all the memory records of those days.

Then I resumed the full possession of my senses. Amy's pale face and
shadowy form were all that were left of _her_--my brother's seat at
the table and the fireside were empty. But his clothes, his picture,
his riding cap and spurs, a thousand trifles scattered round, called
up his dread image every day to the fratricide. His dog left the house
every morning, and came not back till evening. One day he was found
dead in the graveyard where his master had been laid.

Amy clung to me with despairing love. She _would_ talk of the lost
one. She _would_ find every day in me some resemblance to him.
Perhaps she would even have wedded in me the memory of the departed.
But that thought was too horrible. I loved her no longer.

Friends came to condole with me. Every word of sympathy was a barbed
arrow. I could bear it no longer. Conscience stung me not to madness,
but confession. I repelled sympathy--I solicited denunciation. I told
them I was my brother's murderer. I forced my confession on every one
who would hear it. Then it became rumored about that my "fine mind,"
so they phrased it, had given way beneath the weight of sorrow. I was
regarded with fear. A physician of my acquaintance made me a friendly
visit, and shook his head when he heard my story. One day this
gentleman invited me to ride in his carriage. He left me