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, and their places are filled by others in the great race of human life. But a truce to moralizing.--Two months passed away, and it was now the season of summer--that delicious season, fraught with more voluptuous pleasures than virgin spring, gloomy autumn or hoary winter. It was in rather an obscure street of Boston--in a modest two-story wooden house--and in an apartment plainly, even humbly furnished, that two ladies were seated, engaged in an earnest conversation. One of these ladies was probably near forty years of age, and had evidently once been extremely handsome; her countenance still retained traces of great beauty--but time, and care, and perhaps poverty, were beginning to mar it. Her figure was good, though perhaps rather too full for grace; and her dress was very plain yet neat, and not without some claims to taste.