off, she stamped with her foot upon Burke's, as if to tell him that he was wanted. He knew instantly the meaning of the sign, having previously seen her leading Jamie, to use his own words, as a dumb lamb to the slaughter. The moment she departed, he followed; and when he entered, he was accosted by Mrs Hare with the words, "You have come too late; the whisky is all done." At this time, Jamie was sitting in the front room, with the cup (used for a glass) in his hand, smiling and talking, and every now and then looking round for the entry of his mother. Hare was alongside of him, and Burke took a seat opposite. It was proposed to send for another half-mutchkin, and this having been procured, they invited Jamie to the fatal back room with the window looking out on the dead wall. On getting him into the apartment, they advised him to sit down on the front of the bed, to which he assented; and Hare's wife, after getting some of the spirits, went out, and locked the door quietly, and put the key in through an opening below it, supposed to have been made for the purpose. Now was the time to tempt Jamie with the whisky; but to their utter disappointment, they found that he would drink no more than he had done, and that scarcely amounted to a glass. It was his mother he wanted, and for her he repeatedly called, in those accents of yearning which, though coming from a youth, had, in perfect consistency with his nature, all the pathos of infantine simplicity. Alas! there was no mother there. Even the woman, who might have understood the yearning,--for she was herself a mother,--had locked him in with demons. The two men were driven out of their reckoning by Jamie's refusal to drink, and were necessitated to manoeuvre; but in any view, they had a young and strong individual to deal with, and they knew, from prior experience, that unless aided by the effects of drink, they must lay their account with a desperate resistance. No effort was left untried to get Jamie to take more whisky, but still with the unsuccessful result. As yet kindly to him, he did not suspect them; and, at length, so far overcome even by the small quantity of spirits he had drunk, he lay down on the bed and fell asleep. But this state, which even in the most wicked has the appearance of innocence, was to be no guard against those to whom the old proverb so well applied,--"_Somnus absit ab oculis_." Yes, they required to be awake, for they had _work_ to do. They must kill a young, full-blooded youth, without the use of a lethal weapon, and without leaving a mark. They must wrestle to do this against the piteous appeals of innocence from one God-stricken, and who had never injured human being. They must do it with the ferocity of the striped lord of the jungle; they must do it without the help or the excuse of revenge; they must do it with the ingenuity of an artist.