And there, too, were the handwritings he had imitated, the signatures he had forged, the sham accounts he had fabricated against the wealthy or the needy, the ignorant and the wary alike; but Sharkley felt no real penitence, for he knew not that he had committed any sin. Had he not always kept the shady side of the law? and, if rescued, would he not return to his sharp practice thereof as usual? Yet he felt, as the moments sped on, a strange agony creeping into his soul: "So writhes the mind Remorse hath riven, Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven, Darkness above, despair beneath, Around it flame, within it death!" The bush bending under his weight, hung more perpendicularly now, and thus Sharkley's knees, for the first time, grazed till they were skinned and bloody against the rough brickwork. Was the root yielding? Oh no, no; forbid it fate! He must live--live--_live_; he was not fit to die--and thus, too! The cold, salt perspiration, wrung by agony, flowed from the roots of his hair, till it well nigh blinded him, and tears, for even a creature such as he can weep, began to mingle with them. They were perfectly genuine, however, as Master William S. Sharkley wept the probabilities of his own untimely demise. He had once been on a coroner's inquest. It sat in the principal room of a village inn, upon some human bones--nearly an entire skeleton--found in an old, disused, and partially filled-up pit. He remembered their aspect, so like a few white, bleached winter branches, as they lay on a sheet on the dining-table. He could recall the surmises of the jurors. Did the person fall? Had he, or she--for even sex was doubtful then--been murdered? or had it been a case of suicide? None might say. The poor bones of the dead alone could have told, and they were voiceless. All was mystery, and yet the story of some forgotten life, of some unknown crime, or hidden sorrow, lay there; the story that man could never, never know. This episode had long since been forgotten by Sharkley; and now, in an instant, it flashed vividly before him, adding poignancy to the keen horrors of his situation. Was such a fate to be his? He could distinctly see the upper ledge of bricks, as he looked upward from where, though he had not swung above three minutes, he seemed to have been for an eternity now; and though he knew not how to pray, he thought that he could spend the remainder of his life happily there, if but permitted to rest his toes upon that narrow ledge, as a place for footing, as now his arms seemed about to be rent from his shoulders. His eyes were closed for a time, and he scarcely dared to breathe--still less to think.