It was an awful moment. A groan, in which was concentrated the despair of seven miserable souls, rose from that petrified band; then, man by man, they separated and fell back, showing on each weak or wicked face the particular passion which had driven them into crime and made them the victims of this wholesale revenge. There had been some sort of bond between them till the vision of death rose before each shrinking soul. Shoulder to shoulder in crime, they fell apart as their doom approached; and rushing, shrieking, each man for himself, they one and all sought to escape by doors, windows or any outlet which promised release from this fatal spot. One rushed by me--I do not know which one--and I felt as if a flame from hell had licked me, his breath was so hot and the moans he uttered so like the curses we imagine to blister the lips of the lost. None of them saw me; they did not even detect the sliding form of the lawyer crawling away before them to some place of egress of which they had no knowledge; and, convinced that in this scene of death I could play no part worthy of her who awaited me, I too rushed away and, groping my way back through the cellar, sought the side of her who still crouched in patient waiting against the dismal wall. IV THE FINAL SHOCK Her baby had fallen asleep. I knew this by the faint, low sweetness of her croon; and, shuddering with the horrors I had witnessed, horrors which acquired a double force from the contrast presented by the peace of this quiet spot and the hallowing influence of the sleeping infant,--I threw myself down in the darkness at her feet, gasping out: "Oh, thank God and your uncle's seeming harshness, that you have escaped the doom which has overtaken those others! You and your babe are still alive; while they--" "What of them? What has happened to them? You are breathless, trembling; you have brought no bread--" "No, no. Food in this house means death. Your relatives gave food and wine to your uncle at a supper; he, though now in his grave, has returned the same to them. There was a bottle--" I stopped, appalled. A shriek, muffled by distance but quivering with the same note of death I had heard before, had gone up again from the other side of the wall against which we were leaning. "Oh!" she gasped; "and my father was at that supper! my father, who died last night cursing the day he was born! We are an accursed race. I have known it all my life; perhaps that was why I mistook passion for love; and my baby--O God, have mercy! God have mercy!"