of flesh; and here, the most
horrible object of all, the mutilated and ghastly head, with the same
expression of malignant hate upon its hideous features as when those
livid lips had last uttered curses!

'The deed is done,' said the Doctor, addressing Sydney, with a grim
smile--'justice has its due at last, and the diabolical villain has gone
to his final account. Summon some scavenger to collect the vile remains,
and bury them in a dung-hill. To give them Christian, decent burial
would be treason to man, sacrilege to the Church, and impiety to God!'

Thus perished the 'Dead Man,' a villain so stupendous, so bloodthirsty
and so desperate that it may well be doubted whether such a monster ever
could have existed. But this diabolical character is not entirely drawn
from the author's imagination; neither is it highly exaggerated;--for
the annals of crime will afford instances of villainy as deep and as
monstrous as any that characterized the career of the 'Dead Man' of our
tale. What, for example, can be more awful or incredible than the
hideous deed of a noted criminal in France, who, having ensnared a
peasant girl in a wood, brutally murdered her, then outraged the corpse,
and afterwards _ate a part of it_? Yet no one will presume to doubt the
fact, as it forms a portion of the French criminal records. Humanity
shudders at such instances of worse than devilish depravity.

Moreover, to show that we have indulged in no improbabilities in
portraying the chief villain of our tale, we assert that a person
bearing that name and the same disfigurement of countenance, _really
existed_ not two years ago. He was renowned for his many crimes, and was
murdered by a former accomplice, in a manner not dissimilar to the death
we have assigned to him in the story.

But we turn from a contemplation of such villains, to pursue a different
and somewhat more agreeable channel.

CHAPTER XXX

_Showing that a man should never marry a woman before he sees her
face--The Disappointed Bridegroom--Final Catastrophe._

Two months passed away. Two months!--how short a space of time, and yet,
perchance, how pregnant with events affecting the happiness and the
destiny of millions! Within that brief span--the millionth fraction of a
single sand in Time's great hour-glass--thousands have begun their
existence, to pursue through life a career of honor, of profit, of
ambition, or of crime!--and thousands, too, have ceased their existence,