In this thought he expired; for while still pressing upon the pillow with a giant's strength, he suddenly fell on his face, and when turned over was a corpse. He gave but a single gasp, and was no more. The horror of the spectacle drove me from the chamber, and I ran to my own to fall down and die; when the blessed thought entered my mind, that the wo on my spirit, the anguish, the distraction, were but a dream--that my very existence, as the miser and broken-hearted father, was a phantasm rather than a reality, since it was a borrowed existence--and that it was in my power to exchange it, as I had done other modes of being, for a better. I was Sheppard Lee, not Abram Skinner; and this was but a voluntary episode in my existence, which I was at liberty to terminate. The thought was rapture. I resolved to sally out and fasten upon the first body I could find, being certain I could be in none so miserable as I had been in that I now inhabited. Nay, the idea was so agreeable, the execution of it seemed to promise such certain release from a load of wretchedness, that I resolved to attempt it without even waiting for morning. I seized upon my hat and cloak, and, for fear I might stumble into some poor man's body, as I had done in the case of Dawkins's, I opened my strong-box, and clapped into my pockets all the money it contained, designing to take precautionary measures to transfer it along with my spirit to the new tenement. I seized upon the loaned money that had been repaid that day, together with a small sum that had been in the box before; and, had there been a million in the coffer, I should have nabbed it all, without much question of the right I actually possessed in it. The whole sum was small, not exceeding four hundred dollars, all being in bank-bills. I should have been glad of more, but was too eager to exchange my vile casing, with its miseries, for a better, to think of waiting till bank-hours next day. Taking possession, therefore, of this sum, and a dozen silver spoons that had been left in pledge a few days before, I hastened to put my plan into execution. I slipped down stairs, let myself out of the door as softly as if I had been an intruder, and set out, in a night of February, to search for a new body. 7. CHAPTER VII. IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT A MAN MAY BE MORE USEFUL AFTER DEATH THAN WHILE LIVING.