The eyes of all now turned upon Houseman; and he, after twice vainly endeavoring to speak, for the words died inarticulate and choked within him, advancing a few steps, pointed towards a spot on which, the next moment, fell the concentrated light of every torch. An indescribable and universal murmur, and then a breathless silence, ensued. On the spot which Houseman had indicated, with the head placed to the right, lay what once had been a human body! “Can you swear,” said the priest, solemnly, as he turned to Houseman, “that these are the bones of Clarke?” “Before God, I can swear it!” replied Houseman, at length finding his voice. “MY FATHER!” broke from Walter’s lips as he sank upon his knees; and that exclamation completed the awe and horror which prevailed in the breasts of all present. Stung by a sense of the danger he had drawn upon himself, and despair and excitement restoring, in some measure, not only his natural hardihood, but his natural astuteness, Houseman, here mastering his emotions, and making that effort which he was afterwards enabled to follow up with an advantage to himself of which he could not then have dreamed,--Houseman, I say, cried aloud, “But I did not do the deed; I am not the murderer.” “Speak out! Whom do you accuse?” said the curate. Drawing his breath hard, and setting his teeth as with some steeled determination, Houseman replied,-- “The murderer is Eugene Aram!” “Aram!” shouted Walter, starting to his feet: “O God, thy hand hath directed me hither!” And suddenly and at once sense left him, and he fell, as if a shot had pierced through his heart, beside the remains of that father whom he had thus mysteriously discovered. BOOK V. Surely the man that plotteth ill against his neighbor perpetrateth ill against himself, and the evil design is most evil to him that deviseth it. --Hesiod CHAPTER I. GRASSDALE.--THE MORNING OF THE MARRIAGE.--THE CRONES GOSSIP.--THE BRIDE AT HER TOILET.--THE ARRIVAL. JAM veniet virgo, jam dicetur Hymenaeus, Hymen, O Hymenae! Hymen ades, O Hymenae! CATULLUS: Carmen Nuptiale. It was now the morning in which Eugene Aram was to be married to Madeline Lester. The student’s house had been set in order for the arrival of the bride; and though it was yet early morn, two old women, whom his domestic (now not the only one, for a buxom lass of eighteen had been transplanted from Lester’s household to meet the additional cares that the change of circumstances brought to Aram’s) had invited to assist her in arranging what was already arranged, were bustling about the lower apartments and making matters, as they call it, “tidy.” “Them flowers look but poor things, after all,” muttered an old crone, whom our readers will recognize as Dame Darkmans, placing a bowl of exotics on the table. “They does not look nigh so cheerful as them as grows in the open air.”