He could see the shadowy lineaments of the man he had murdered flickering about in the doubtful air, with the very folds of the bed-clothes which his own hand had gathered round it, pictured in misty but accurate lines, like an artist's first sketch emerging from a ground of dark and indistinct space. He grew anxious to get home. He wondered how it was that never in his life before had any sight so haunted him, and yet he had seen many worse agonies than that,--many. Yes; he had seen old sinners die,--stubborn and unrepentant to the last; he had seen them die, and make no sign of hope of Heaven's grace. And he had seen young maids die of very terror at the thought and name of death. Yet these were nothing. They were happiness itself to what he had witnessed that night. When he arrived at home, his wife remarked that he looked pale and ill. “No, my dear,” he replied, “I am very well indeed,--wonderfully well. I never felt better in my life. I can assure you, you are mistaken.” He sat down to his supper; but as he tried to carve, his knife slipped, and he did not try it again. The face of the lawyer seemed to be over the table, dancing about in the broad beams of the candlelight. “You tremble, Frank!” cried his wife; “your hand shakes. How did you leave Skinwell?” “He is dead.” “Dead!” “Yes,--he is gone. A concussion of the brain has taken him off. It was a terrible fall, indeed.” “But how sudden!” exclaimed she. “People will die suddenly sometimes,” replied the doctor; “and especially when pitched headlong out of a gig on a stony road. Now I think of it, let me tell you, my dear, that to-morrow perhaps, or on some early day, I shall want you to show a young woman down in the village here, all over the house. I wish her to see the patients. Do not ask any questions now; I have particular reasons for it. I only have to request of you very particularly, when she does come, to make no inquiries of her of any kind, nor to answer any questions she may put to you. It is of great importance to yourself as well as to me; and more so indeed than you can be aware of just now; so that it is unnecessary to insist further upon it.”