The little medicine-chest was partially open, with the key in its lock; but this had been done of purpose, and was the result of no accident; and within lay something white--a sheet of paper--which assuredly was not there when he had opened it before. Almost too anxious to pay any attention to these elaborate marks of intention and design, Horace seized the box and the phial which he had filled. He could not pause even to look whether the leather which covered the cork had been removed, or any of the contents were gone, but hastened to the fireplace, where the ashes of a fire still lay in the grate, and with trembling hands broke the neck of the bottle against the grate, and emptied out its contents--for he dared not go outside, lest some one should see him. As he paused, kneeling on the hearth, breathless and with a beating heart, he tried to take comfort and re-assure himself. It was gone; no evidence existed now that the son had entered in, murderous and secret, to the father's chamber. He tried to persuade himself that he breathed more freely; then he grovelled down upon the hearth, and hid his face in his hands. God help him! what did it matter though no one else suspected?--deep in the bottom of his heart did not he _know_?--and was there anything in heaven or earth which could wash the horror of that certainty out of Horace Scarsdale's miserable mind? He had been selfish, malicious, unloving before; but never till now had he been a _murderer_--and, oh! the horrible difference, the change unspeakable, which that dread distinction made! However, he got up at last, all shuddering and weak, with the remains of the phial grasped in his hand, and with a morbid curiosity returned again to examine the box. This time he set it open and took out the sheet of paper. He could scarcely distinguish the words at first, for the awe of looking at his father's writing, and receiving thus, as it were, a direct message from the dead; but when the sense slowly broke upon him the effect was like a stroke of magic. He stood staring at the paper, his eyes starting from his head, his face flushing and paling with wild vicissitudes of colour; then he dropped down heavily on the floor, thrusting aside unconsciously Mr. Scarsdale's chair, which stood in its usual place by the table. He could neither cry nor help himself; he fell heavily, like a man stunned by a sudden blow--voice, strength, consciousness went out of him; he lay prostrate, with his head upon the fleecy lambskin where his father's feet had been accustomed to rest, no longer a self-defending, self-torturing, conscious parricide, with a brand upon his soul worse than that of Cain; a figure blind and helpless, an insensible, inanimate mass of dull flesh and blood, conscious of nothing in the world, not even that he lived and was a man.