head toward him. That movement was her last on earth; in
another instant she was prostrate upon the carpet, her throat encircled
by the fingers of the ghastly monster; her countenance became suffused
with a dark purple--blood gushed from her mouth, eyes and nostrils--and
in a few minutes all was over!

The murderer arose from his appalling work, and his loathsome face
assumed, beneath his mask, an expression of demoniac satisfaction.

''Tis done!' he muttered--'damn the old fool, she thought I was a
_friend_ of her accursed nephew's. But I must leave the corpse in such a
situation that it may be supposed the old woman committed suicide.'

He tore off the large shawl which the poor lady had worn, and fastened
it about her neck; then he hung the body upon the parlor door, and
placed an overturned chair near its feet, to lead to the supposition
that she had stood upon the chair while adjusting the shawl about her
neck and then overturned it in giving the fatal spring. This arrangement
the Dead Man effected with the utmost rapidity and then forcing open a
bureau which stood in the parlor, he took from the drawer various
articles of value, jewelry, &c., and a pocket-book containing a
considerable sum of money--forgetting, in his blind stupidity, that the
circumstances of a robbery having taken place, would destroy the
impression that the unfortunate old lady had come to her death
voluntarily by her own hands.

The murderer then fled from the house and that night he and Archer, in
the mysterious depths of the Dark Vaults, celebrated their bloody
exploits by mad orgies, horrid blasphemy, and demoniac laughter.

We left Clinton weltering in his blood upon the floor of the temple in
the conservatory. The poor mangled youth was discovered in that
deplorable situation shortly after the perpetration of the abominable
outrage which had deprived him of the blessed gift of speech forever. He
was conveyed to the residence of Dr. Schultz, a medical gentleman of
eminent skill, who stopped the effusion of blood, and pronounced his
eventual recovery certain. But oh! who can imagine the feelings of the
unfortunate boy, when returning consciousness brought with it the
appalling conviction that the faculty of expressing his thoughts in
words was gone forever, and henceforward he was hopelessly _dumb_! By
great exertion he scrawled upon a piece of paper his name and residence;
a carriage was procured, and he was soon beneath the roof of hi