A small apartment, with windows shut and sealed like the doors of a sepulcher.--On a small table, amid vials and surgical instruments, stands a light, whose rays tremble over the bed, which occupied the greater part of the room. Above the bed, from the darkly papered walls, smiles a picture of the Virgin Mary, while beneath, by the folds of the coverlet, you may trace the outlines of a human form. Beside the bed stands a slender man dressed in black, with a heavy pair of gold spectacles on his hooked nose. It is Corkins, the familiar spirit of the Madam. Corkins, whose slender frame, incased in black, reminds you of the raven, while his face with top-knot, gold spectacles, ferret-like eyes, and pointed beard, reminds you of the owl. "Bad!" mutters Corkins, "bad!" and he gazes upon the occupant of the bed, knotting his fingers together like a man who is exceedingly perplexed. The bed and its occupant? Ask us not to picture the full horror of the sight which Arthur saw (from his place of concealment), as Corkins gently drew the coverlet aside. "Alice!" he did not pronounce the word with his lips, but his heart uttered it--it was echoed in the depths of his soul. He saw the pale face, and the sunny hair, which fell in a flood upon her bared shoulders. He saw the arms outspread, with the fingers trembling and working as with the impulse of a spasm. He saw the eyes which opened with a dead stare, and fixed vaguely upon the ceiling, had no look of life in their leaden glance. He saw the lips, which were colorless and almost covered with white foam. And as the sufferer moved her head, and flung it back upon the pillow, he saw her throat--no longer white and beautiful--but with swollen veins, writhing with torture, and starting from the discolored skin. Never, never until his last hour can Arthur forget that sight. And poor Alice, writhing thus between life and death, talked to herself in a voice husky and faint, and said certain words that made Arthur's blood gather in a flood about his heart: "Herman, you will not desert me!" she said, and then while the foam was on her lips, she babbled of her father and home--writhing all the while in every nerve and vein. Arthur entered the room. Corkins turned and beheld him, and uttered a cry of fright. For at that moment Arthur's face was not a pleasant face for any man to look upon, much less Corkins. And the iron bar which Arthur held in his clenched hand, taken into connection with the look on his face, reminded Corkins of stories which he had read--stories which told of living men, bruised suddenly to death by such a hand and such an iron bar. Corkins, therefore, uttered a cry of fright, and in his terror shook his gold spectacles from his parrot nose. "Down," said Arthur, in a low voice, "on your knees,"--he pointed to a nook of the room, between the foot of the bed and the wall. "Stay there with your face to the wall."