"Doctor, it must out. Heaven knows it, and what avails it that it is concealed from earth? Dear wife! once the beloved of my soul, know ye that, for ten years, you have nightly taken to your soft confiding bosom, a----." Here he stopped, as if the word were a physical thing sticking in his throat. "A kind husband," said his wife. "A murderer!" he said--"ay, the murderer, first of an uncle, and then of a cousin! Turn from me your eyes, and I will confess all--for now my relief is in confession; and that will not be satisfied till I throw myself at the back of the prison door, and cry through the gratings to let me in for mercy's sake. I lived with my uncle, but I was not his heir; and the death that seemed long a-coming, could, at any rate, only benefit my cousin, Walter T----, whose apparition I saw yesterday, and see now--dreadful sight! My bad habits generated a morbid desire for money, which I could not want. I stole my uncle's watch, and heard him blame my cousin. My fancy took the hint, and I formed, with a care worthy of a better cause, a deep scheme, whereby I might, by one spring, jump into the possession and enjoyment of wealth. I waited the first fall of snow, and, with my cousin's stolen shoes, walked from that window to his house, where I deposited the originals of the foot-prints, together with a pistol and the stolen watch, by introducing them through a small skylight on the top of his house. I then returned to my uncle's house by another path, entered his bedroom, where he was sleeping at the fire, pretended that some one was at the window, drew it up so that the servants might hear it, turned round, shot (with another pistol) my uncle through the chest, and cried out at the window to stop the murderer. An alarm was raised; some one ran for my cousin, who was found in his own house; while I hastened for you, who became a tool in my hands. Why need I proceed? What follows is known. What preceded my crime, I have no patience to tell: how I seduced my cousin, in moments of intoxication, to engage in conversations afterwards proved against him; how I got my uncle to blame him for stealing the watch, in presence of the housekeeper; and many other ingenious treacherous schemes. By getting my cousin convicted, I removed out of the way the only impediment between me and my uncle's property. He was hanged, and I took his place as my uncle's heir. Thus was I guilty of a double murder. How, O God! have I been brought to tell what I have for fifteen years shuddered to think of? But it has been wrung from me by a heaven-sent calamity, which has, for these few moments, intermitted, by Heaven's decree, to allow me breath and power to make this confession; and now, being done, my pain comes again, and these crackling bones of Walter T---- rattle in my ears and dance before my eyes. Whither shall I fly for refuge? Heaven, earth, and hell are against me--my own flesh wars with my soul, and my soul with my flesh!"