an end-though a hungry constrictor battling with the huge rhinoceros, and crushing his mailed ribs beneath its folds, could not have been so fierce or fearful; fewer now, and fainter are her struggles; that face is livid blue, the eyes have started out and goggle horribly; the tongue protrudes, swollen and black. Aha! there is another convulsive effort, -how strong she is still! can you hold her, Simon ?—can he?—All the fiend possessed him now with savage exultation: can he?-only look! gripe, gripe still, you are conquering, strong man she is getting weaker, weaker; here is your reward, gold! gold! a mighty store uncounted; one more grasp, and it is all your own, relent now, she hangs you. Come, make short work of it, break her neck,-gripe harder,-back with her, back with her, here against the bedstead: keep her down, down I say,- -she must not rise again. Crack! went a little something in her neck,—did you hear it? There's the death-rattle, the last smothery complicated gasp-what, didn't you hear that? And the devil congratulated Simon on his victory.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE REWARD.

TILL the wretch had done the deed, he scarcely knew that it was doing. It was a horrid, mad excitement, where the soul had spread its wings upon the whirlwind, and heeded not whither it was hurried. A terrible necessity had seemed to spur him onwards all the while, and one thing so succeeded to another, that he scarce could stop at any but the first. From the moment he had hidden in the shower-bath, (but for God's interposing mercy,) his doom appeared to have been sealed,-robbery, murder, false witness, and-damnation !

Crime is the rushing rapid, which, but for some kind miracle, inevitably carries on through circling eddies, and a foamy swingeing tide, to the cataract of death and woe: haste, poor fisherman of Erie, paddle hard back, stem the torrent, cling to the shore, hold on tight by

L

this friendly bough; know you not whither the headlong current drives? hear you not the roar of many waters, the maddening rush as of an ocean disenthralled? feel you not the earth trembling at the thunder,-see you not the heaven clouded o'er with spray?

Helpless wretch,-thy frail canoe has leapt that dizzy water-cliff, Niagara !

But if, in doing that fell deed, madness raged upon the minutes, now that it was done-all still, all calm, all quiet, Terror held the hourglass of Time: There lay the corpse, motionless, though coiled and cramped in the attitude of struggling agony; and the murderer gazed upon his victim with a horror most intense. Fly! fly-he dared not stop to think: fly! fly anywhither, as you are-wait for nothing; fly thou caitiff, for thy life! So he caught up the blood-bought spoils, and was fumbling with shaky fingers at the handle of the garden door, when the unseen Tempter whispered in his ear,

"I say, Simon, did not your aunt die of apoplexy ?"

O kind and wise suggestion! O lightsome, tranquillizing thought! Thanks! thanks! thanks! And if the arch fiend had revealed

himself in person at the moment, Simon would have worshipped at his feet.

"But," and as he communed with his own black heart, there needed now no Devil for his prompter," if this matter is to be believed, I must contrive a little, that it may look likelier. Let me see:-yes, we must lay all tidy, and the old witch shall have died in her sleep; apoplexy! capital indeed; no telltales either; well, I must set to work."

Can mortal mind conceive that sickening office? To face the strangled corpse, yet warm; to lift the fearful burden in his arms, and order out the heavily-yielding limbs in the ease of an innocent sleep? To arrange the bed, smooth down the tumbled coverlid, set everything straight about the room, and erase all tokens of that dread encounter? It needed nerves of iron, a heart all stone, a cool, clear head, a strong arm, a mindful, self-protecting spirit; but all these requisites came to Simon's aid upon the instant; frozen up with fear, his heartstrings worked that puppet-man rigidly as wires; guilt supplied a reckless energy, a wild physical power, which actuates no human frame but one saturate with crime, or madness; and in the midst of those terrific details, the mur

derer's judgment was so calm and so collected, that nothing was forgotten, nothing unconsidered,—unless, indeed, it were that he outgeneralled himself by making all too tidy to be natural. Hence, suspicion at the inquest; for the “apoplexy” thought was really such a good one, that, but for so exact a laying out, the fat old corpse might have easily been buried without one surmise of the way she met her end. Again and again, in the history of crimes, it is seen that a "Judas hangs himself;" and albeit, as we know, the murderer has hitherto escaped detection, still his own dark hour shall arrive in its due place.

The dreadful office done, he asked himself again, or may be took counsel of the Devil, (for that evil master always cheats his servants,) “What shall I do with my reward, this crock -these crocks of gold? It might be easy to hide one of them, but not all; and as to leaving any behind, that I won't do. About opening them, to see which is which-"

"I tell you what," said the Tempter, as the clock struck three, "whatever you do, make haste; by morning's dawn the house and garden will be searched, no doubt, and the crocks found in your possession. Listen to me, I'm your friend, bless you! remember the apoplexy.