see,” said the monk, gazing round the room. “But there are those that I do see,” replied the dying wretch, “and that see me; that are watching, waiting for me, the moment the breath is out of my body. I see them, I feel them,--stand on my right side.” The monk changed his position. “Now they are on the left.” The monk shifted again. “Now they are on my right.” The monk commanded the children and relatives of the dying wretch to enter the room, and surround the bed. They obeyed the command. “Now they are every where,” exclaimed the sufferer, and expired(6). (6) Fact,--me ipso teste. “This terrible story came freshly to my recollection, accompanied by many others. I had heard much of the terrors that surrounded the dying bed of the guilty, but, from what I was compelled to hear, I almost believe them to be less than the terrors of a guilty sleep. I have said my companion began at first with low mutterings, but among them I could distinguish sounds that reminded me too soon of all I wished to forget, at least while we were together. He murmured, “An old man?--yes,--well, the less blood in him. Grey hairs?--no matter, my crimes have helped to turn them grey,--he ought to have rent them from the roots long ago. They are white, you say?--well, to-night they shall be dyed in blood, then they will be white no longer. Aye,--he will hold them up at the day of judgment, like a banner of condemnation against me. He will stand at the head of an army stronger than the army of martyrs,--the host of those whose murderers have been their own children. What matter whether they cut their parents’ hearts or their throats. I have cut _one_ through and through, to the very core,--now for the other, it will give him less pain, I feel that,”--and he laughed, shuddered, and writhed on his stony bed. Trembling with horror ineffable, I tried to awake him. I shook his muscular arms, I rolled him on his back, on his face,--nothing could awake him. It seemed as if I was only rocking him on his cradle of stone. He went on, “Secure the purse, I know the drawer of the cabinet where it lies, but secure him first. Well, then, you cannot,--you shudder at his white hairs, at his calm sleep!--ha! ha! that villains should be fools. Well, then, I must be the man, it is but a short struggle with him or me,--he may be damned, and I must. Hush,--how the stairs creak, they will not tell him it is his son’s foot that is ascending?--They dare not, the stones of the wall would give them the lie. Why did you not oil the hinges of the door?--now for it. He sleeps intensely,--aye, how calm he looks!--the calmer the fitter for heaven. Now,--now, my knee is on his breast,--where is the knife?--where is the knife?--if he looks at me I am lost. The knife,--I am a coward; the knife,--if he opens his eyes I am gone; the knife, ye cursed cravens,--who dare shrink when I have griped my father’s throat? There,--there,--there,--blood to the hilt,--the old man’s blood; look