But his anxiety to get the corpse interred before he went away brought him to his senses. The Schrandeners were capable of laying the murdered girl beneath the earth somewhere in the heart of the forest; thereby removing all evidence of their crime, and crippling the hands of justice. The one person he felt could be relied on to do what was right in the matter was the old pastor. Much as he might have denounced and slandered her hitherto, he, at all events, would not be a party to this last foul outrage. Boleslav therefore resolved to rouse him from his bed, and to bring him to the spot, so that later when he himself was, God knew where, a witness might not be wanting. The belfry clock struck eleven as he reached the village street. The sentinels were parading noiselessly up and down in front of the church door, otherwise the whole world was apparently wrapped in profound slumber. But from one of the cottages he passed, loud blows, oaths, and scolding cries fell upon his ear. He looked over the hedge, and saw the green coffin which was the carpenter Hackelberg's trade-mark, looming uncannily from its stand. The drunkard's imbecile formula occurred to him. "His wish is likely to be fulfilled," he thought; "he has now the chance of making a coffin for his daughter;" and in a bitterly ironical mood he determined to communicate to the old man, if he were still in possession of his faculties, his child's terrible end, and to demand the fulfilment of his promise. He entered the gloomy passage. From a room on the right proceeded the gurgling cries of the thick, drunken voice which excited his involuntary disgust. Mingled with it was a spasmodic hissing and whizzing that he could not explain, till he had lifted the latch and witnessed a spectacle so horrible and revolting that, rich as the day had been for him in horrors, he recoiled before it faint and shuddering. The old carpenter, his clothes half torn off, bleeding from the throat and arms, the moonlight bringing into prominence the hideous filthiness of the room, plunged about as if seized with an attack of St. Vitus's dance. Every limb quivered violently, and he foamed at the mouth. His eyes rolled in a maniacal frenzy, and the muscles of his face twitched convulsively. A huge plane hung from his right hand, the handle of which, formed in the shape of a ring, had grazed his knuckles, and which he vainly endeavoured to steady with his palsied fingers. Whenever he came to a wooden surface, whether on the table, the walls, or the planks that covered the floor, he tried to plane it, and this caused the hissing sound which always ended abruptly with a rasping jerk.