The words were scarcely uttered, when once more the vision of the murdered man rose before Macbeth. With a scream of terror he again recoiled, pouring forth a torrent of entreaties and defiance. Lady Macbeth once more tried to smooth matters over, but her husband’s frenzied ravings could not be so lightly covered, and, dreading the suspicions that his wild words must give rise to, she hastily dismissed the guests on the plea of his sudden illness. When everyone had gone, and the husband and wife were left alone, she was too worn out and unhappy to utter any further reproaches or questions. Haggard and miserable, the guilty pair stood there in the deserted hall, amid the broken fragments of the disordered feast and the dying torches that flickered in the first gray twilight of dawn. Ashes of splendour, loneliness, despair--it seemed like the emblem of their own ruined lives. Macbeth was quiet enough now; he seemed possessed with a sort of sullen desperation. He had waded so deep in blood, it would be as tedious to go back as to go forward, and he determined that any cause that hindered his own good should be ruthlessly swept aside. It was he, not Lady Macbeth, who was the leader now. Banquo’s murder he had arranged alone, and he asked no counsel from his wife about a fresh deed of iniquity he was already planning. But in his guilty superstition he resolved to go early the next day to seek the weird sisters, to learn from them, if possible, what secrets fate still held in store. The Witches’ Cavern Macbeth had gained his throne by treachery, and he had no confidence in the loyalty of his subjects. He feared lest they should plot together to bring back the sons of Duncan, and he had secret spies in the households of all the great nobles. The one he feared most, next to Banquo, was Macduff, Thane of Fife, and when the latter refused to obey the tyrant’s bidding to attend the great feast, Macbeth knew that he was likely to prove a dangerous enemy, and resolved to get rid of him without delay. But before he could lay hands on him, Macduff fled the country, leaving his wife and children in his castle in Fife, and going himself to the Court of the English King to beg his help in placing Malcolm on the throne. It was the day after the banquet at Macbeth’s palace. In a gloomy cavern, far removed from the haunts of men, the three witches were busy brewing a hideous compound for some dark and evil purpose. In the middle of the cavern was a boiling cauldron, and as the witches circled round it in a grotesque dance, each in turn flung in some horrible ingredient. The flames crackled, clouds of hissing steam arose from the cauldron, and as they danced the witches croaked a discordant chant: “Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” The charm was just completed to their satisfaction, when there came a knocking at the entrance of the cavern. The second witch looked up with a cunning gleam in her sunken eyes.