Then I began to think what could be done to bring her to. I never had much experience with people that got hurt, except the ones I’d seen at the railroad, and I wa’n’t just sure what to do with anyone in this fix. But I’d read somethin’ about it somewhere, and so I went into the back room and drew some water into a pail and took an old cloth and got down on the floor and commenced washin’ her head. But I couldn’t see the first sign of life. Then I looked around for some whiskey and found a little in a bottle in the closet and poured some in her mouth, but it all run right out, and she didn’t move. “Of course I never went to school very much but no matter how good an education I had I don’t s’pose I could tell you how I felt so you’d know it yourself. I never s’posed I’d do anything to get into any trouble, and I always thought I was different from criminals. But here I was in the house with her dead, and I’d killed her, and what would happen to me? I just pictured the headlines in the newspapers and the boys callin’ ‘all about the Jackson murder,’ and me tried for murder and hung, and the kid goin’ ‘round the rest of his life knowin’ that his father had killed his mother and then got hung. “At first I just set paralyzed and sort of held my head in my hands and moaned, and wondered if mebbe it wa’n’t a dream and if I couldn’t wake up, and then I thought I’d go and give myself up to the police and be done with it, and then I thought I might just as well kill myself, so I went and got an old razor, that I used to shave with sometimes, and tried to get up my nerve to cut my throat. But somehow I couldn’t put the edge over my wind-pipe. I wish though now that I had. Did you ever try to kill yourself? Them people that say it’s only cowards that kill themselves don’t know what they’re talkin’ about. I’d like to see them try it once. I’d have killed myself only I didn’t have the nerve. It wa’n’t because I cared anything about livin’; but I just couldn’t cut my own throat. Then I thought mebbe she wa’n’t dead, and I’d look again. So I done just the way I had before,—commenced at her feet to see if they’d moved, then when I got up to her hands I thought one of ‘em had moved, and my heart just gave a great big jump. Then I remembered that I’d picked it up, when I’d felt for her pulse and had put it down in a different place. Then I looked up to her face and it was just the same. It was white as a sheet, all except the long red and black welt and the blood, and her eyes wide open, and lookin’ right straight up to the ceilin’ starin’ just like a ghost. Then I felt of her hands and feet, and they was cold as ice and she was stiff, and I knew it was all off and she was dead.