back against the wall, it rebounded from it and swung to again, till it stood at right angles with the threshold and hid from view, as I passed in, any object that might have been concealed behind it.

When we retired, the front of the great back-log had already crumbled into coals, and these again faded into ashes; little jets of flame had shot up fitfully from its unburned ends to bid us their dying good-night, and the farmer had raked the cinders over it to keep it smouldering till daybreak. It was now all ablaze; the flames curled in licking spirals round it and lighted the room with a weird brilliancy, gleaming on the polish of the furniture and on the face of the mirror, and throwing upon the walls and ceiling fantastic shadows that danced and leaped at me as I came in. Of the chairs which had been, according to invariable rule, moved far back from reach of any possible spark, one was drawn forward and stood close to the hearth, suggesting beyond all doubt that its occupant had sought the warmth of the fireplace and re-aroused its blaze. How keen and minute is every observation in such a state of the faculties as I have just described! God only knows what I felt or feared at that moment; and yet, as if there had been nothing else in the universe, I remember that I noted a neglected apple lying between the andirons, and measured with my eye just the richness of the shining black into which one side of it had been roasted by the fire.

Of course, I saw no one, but you might as well have told me that I do not live as that I was alone. Alone! Why, the room was full of the consciousness of the presence of a human soul, and I felt its touch upon mine, its approach and communication tingling in every sense, more keenly than if the subtle sympathy had been broken by any means of converse so discordant and gross as the utterance of a voice or the contact of a hand.

I lifted my candle. Its feeble light, overpowered by the glare of the fire, only cast faint shadows of the chairs and table into

the corners of the parlor. Another moment, and in the surge of the storm, a sudden draft from the French window blew it out, and sent the blaze of the back-log roaring up the chimney. Remembering the sounds I had heard, I approached the window I have named. As I neared it I saw that it was unbolted and that, though closed, it was not entirely so, nor latched. I was reaching towards it with my hand, when again, with redoubled force, came the very demon of the tempest dashing its volley of rain and hail against the panes like grape-shot from the cannon's mouth, and then with one irresistible assault forcing the folded sashes in against my face, staggering me with the blast and drenching me with the storm. At the same moment, whether by force of the draft or from whatever other cause, the parlor door, at which I had entered and to which I had turned my back, closed with a sharp concussion.

In the lull that followed it was only the work of a moment to close the French window and secure the bolt. It was evident that some one had entered the house, and that my senses had not deceived me. I became aware, too, that the consciousness of human presence had left me since the shutting of the parlor door, and now I remembered that I had not looked behind it. From that moment all feeling of personal danger fled, and there came in its place a sense of sudden anxiety for the dear ones in the room overhead. Stooping, I lighted my candle at the fire, and, even in the half second of time that then elapsed, my mind ran accurately through the process of reasoning which told me that neither robbery, nor desire of plunder, nor personal harm to me, was the motive of the intruder, who had had every opportunity to accomplish any such purpose, but that something more terrible impended, and that my babes were in danger. And yet I had not even heard a footfall or a breath.

I ran upstairs. On the landing, the housekeeper's door, which I had carefully closed, was wide open. The rays

of my lifted candle fell on her face. She was still fast asleep. But the babe was gone.

What was it that even in that moment of agony told me how idle it was to rouse her and ask what had become of the child? I ran from the room. I leaped across the landing. The door of the chamber in which the little boys slept, and which I had left open, was shut. I lightly and swiftly opened it and entered the room.

Not a moment too soon. Let me not indulge in any words of dramatic coloring to heighten the effect of the terrible scene that burst upon me. Let me tell it as simply as I can.

The babe lay asleep at the foot of the bed. In it lay my darling boys just as when I had last bent over them such a little while before. But beside the pillow stood my wife, their mother, her hair falling down her shoulders, her face as soft and tender and motherful as ever God made, one hand with its palm laid on the forehead of the oldest child, in exactly the same position in which I had felt the hand on mine, and in the very act of being drawn soothingly along; while in the other, grasped and swayed in an uncertain and purposeless tremor, was uplifted, not the delicate, glittering poniard of the assassin (strange I should have noted such distinctions at such a crisis), but a horrid, coarse, brutal knife, stolen from the butcher's block, and dull and muddy with its homely use. At the same time, as if the accompaniments of an incantation scene had by some demoniac spirit been added to heighten the horror, the air was full of the bitter pungency of burning; and wreaths of smoke were beginning to rise and curl around that awful group. The light valance of the bed was on fire, and in its glare I saw the half-burnt match that had lighted it, lying on the floor.

All this and more I saw, but I must have seen it in a moment no longer than the lightning's flash, for in the next the eyes that looked softly on the child flamed at me with a look so wild, so fierce, so brutal, so fiendish, that I shrieked at the top of

my voice, in the very ecstasy of agony. The hand that lay so gently on the boy's forehead was twisted in his curls with the rapidity with which the serpent darts its venom, and with a violence that tore the cheruby head from the pillow bolt upright. The arm that held the knife grew rigid as a bar of steel.

I knew that the safety of my children depended on diverting the attention of my crazy wife upon myself. Perhaps it was with this motive that I had repeated the shriek and now shouted her name aloud. Still uttering her name, and, with all the mesmeric power I could exert. fixing her gaze on mine, though I almost quailed beneath it, I moved cautiously towards her. Not a muscle moved in her whole frame. But for the cruel gaze and stony murderous ferocity that had hardened her face into something more brutal than that of the most abandoned criminal, she seemed like some sculptor's dream of statuesque and majestic grace and beauty.

I had outstretched my hand. I had given it the disguise of kindly greeting. It was now just in reach of her wrist, which I hoped to grasp with an iron wrench. I might as well have attempted to deceive the arch fiend himself. Quicker than lightning the arm flew up; for the first time her lips opened, and with a yell of rage she fairly leaped upon me. I caught the dull gleam of the blade parting the air, I felt the blunt, painful thud and sting of the stroke, and saw her terrible face, as it flamed at me, sprinkled with the blood that spouted from my veins.

I remember the struggle, as if I was torn by the violence of a tiger, the deadly grasp, the stifling smoke, the startled faces of the little ones, their shrill cries, the feeling of swoon, in which all things swam, though through it all I never lost the desperate purpose to save my children, though I died. I remember the sense of falling, the sound of footsteps on the stairs, of voices entering the room, the terrible glare, always over me, of those implacable eyes, stony with hate and murder, and I remember nothing more.