Here, then, for the present, we leave the subject which has occupied so large a portion of our space. The man murdered in the house, No. 119 Great Porter Square, lies in his grave, and his murderer is still at large. Any of our readers may have come in contact with him this very day; we ourselves may have walked elbow to elbow with him in the crowded thoroughfares; and he will, of a certainty, if he be in England, read to-night the words we are now writing. Tremble, thou unspeakable monster! Though thou escape thy doom at the bar of earthly justice, God's hand lies heavy upon thee, and shall weigh thee down until the Judgment Day, when thou and thy victim shall stand face to face before the eternal throne! [Decoration] CHAPTER XII. MRS. PREEDY HAS DREADFUL DREAMS. So profound was the sleep of Mrs. Preedy, lodging-house keeper, whom we left slumbering in the first chapter of our story, that we have been able, without disturbing her, to make the foregoing extracts from the copies of the _Evening Moon_ which lay on the table immediately beneath her nose. Deep as were her slumbers, they were not peaceful. Murder was in her brain, and it presented itself to her in a thousand hideous and grotesque shapes. Overwhelming, indeed, was her trouble. Only that morning had she said to Mrs. Beale, a bosom friend and neighbour on the other side of the Square-- "I shall never rest easy in my mind till the man's caught and hung!" Dreams, it is said, "go by contrary." If you dream of a marriage, it means death; if you dream of death, it means marriage. Happy augury, then, that Mrs. Preedy should dream that her dead and buried husband, her "blessed angel," was alive, that he had committed the murder, and that she was putting on her best black to see him hanged. Curious to say, in her unconscious state, this otherwise distressing dream was rather enjoyable, for through the tangled threads of the crime and its punishment ran the refrain of a reproach she used to hurl at her husband, when fortune went against him, to the effect that she always knew he would come to a bad end. So altogether, it was a comfortable hanging--Mr. Preedy being dead and out of the reach of danger, and Mrs. Preedy being alive to enjoy it.