He vanished from the light; there was a heavy thud far down below, and then all became still--unnaturally so; but Holcroft could hear the beating of his own pulses, while the blood seemed to be surging about his throbbing temples. Was he acting in a dream from which he would waken to find himself in bed? or was all this happening, not to him, but to some one else? No, there was the bruised right hand, from which the violence of his blow had torn the skin. He had read of dark crimes, of _murders_, but little did he think he would ever become the participator in such a deed; but opportunity is always the devil's game. For a minute--an eternity it seemed, by the chaos of his mind, the sudden inversion of all thought--he did not breathe, he scarcely seemed to live. There was a whisper of 'murder' on his lips, and it seemed to have an echo, that terrible whisper, but whether from the walls, the trees that waved below them, the blue sky, or the crows that were winging their way through it, he knew not. He seemed to whisper the awful word to himself, with quivering lips, again and again, as if he required an assurance of its truth, and then sought to rouse himself from his lethargic stupor, quit the scene of his sudden crime, and seek safety in flight--flight! But, then, to quit Dundargue thus would fix suspicion on himself. Had not Clairette, the French maid, seen him but lately with Allan? And flight would mar the very object for which he had committed the crime. Should he--could he--at all risks to himself and his fortune, ere it was too late, strive to undo what he had done; to give an alarm, and make some excuse or explanation ere life had departed from the shattered frame of his victim, or leave the latter to his obscure fate--a grave under his father's roof! Cowardice and meanness, hatred, jealousy, and avarice all suggested the latter. He knew not the depth of this strange prison, or how far down beneath the foundations of lofty Dundargue and into the rock on which it stands, the sill or floor of the noisome vault might be. He listened; not a sound came upward, nor was there any, save the wild beating of his own heart and the buzzing and singing of blood in his ears. He softly closed the wooden trap-door, let the enormous iron hasp thereof drop over the rusty staple; he closed the massive external entrance, and stealthily crept or glided away. There seemed a silence all around him now; such a silence as must have appalled the soul of the first murderer when he 'rose up against Abel, his brother, and slew him.' So the tragedy--the dark crime--was acted as suddenly as it was weird--suggested by a whisper of the devil! There was nothing very tragic in the accessories of the scene; but, as an author says, 'Are not real tragedies, the social tragedies that go on about us in our every-day life, enacted like comedies, until the last moment, when the curtain falls, and all is dark?'