She tried the door, but found it locked; and the constable slept on. She then returned to the table, seated herself, and for some five or ten minutes continued to twist her long hair round her fingers. She then rose again, and went straight to the window, threw it up, and seemed to look out. "Chilly--chilly," she said. "I most walk to warm myself." The sill of the window was somewhat high, but that was no obstacle; for there was a chair near, and Mrs. Hazleton placed it for herself with as much care as if she had been wide awake. When this was done she stepped lightly upon it, and put her knee upon the window-sill, raised herself suddenly upright, and struck her head sharply against the upper part of the window. It is probable that the blow woke her, but at all events it destroyed her balance, and she fell forward at once out of the window. There was a loud shriek, and then a deep groan. But the constable slept on, and no one knew the fate that had befallen her 'till Mr. Short, the surgeon, passing the house, was attracted to the spot where she had fallen, by a moan, and the sight of a white object lying beneath the window. A loud ringing of the bell, and knocking at the door, soon roused the inhabitants of the house, and the mangled form of Mrs. Hazleton was carried in and stretched upon a bed. She was not dead; and although almost every bone was broken, except the skull, and the terrible injuries she had received precluded all possibility of recovery, she regained her senses before three o'clock of the same day, and continued to linger for somewhat more than a fortnight in agonies both of mind and body, too terrible to be described. With the rapid, though gradual weakening of the corporeal frame, the powers of the mind became enfeebled--the vigorous resolution failed--the self-command abandoned her. Half an hour's death she could have borne with stoical firmness, but a fortnight's was too much. The thoughts she could shut out in vigorous health, forced themselves upon her as she lay there like a crushed worm, and the tortures of hell got hold upon her, long before the spirit departed. Yet a sparkle of the old spirit showed itself even to her last hour. That she was conscious of an eternity, that she was convinced of after judgment, of the reward of good, and of the punishment of evil, that she believed in a God, a hell, a heaven, there can be no doubt--indeed her words more than once implied it--and the anguish of mind under which she seemed to writhe proved it. But yet, she refused all religious consolation; expressed no penitence: no sorrow for what she had done, and scoffed at the surgeon when he hinted that repentance might avail her even then. It seemed that, as with the earthly future, she had made up her mind at once, when first detected, to meet her fate boldly; so with the judgment of the immortal future, she was resolute to encounter it unbending. When urged, nearly at her last hour, to show some repentance, she replied,