He was gasping and panting to such a degree that I thought even now he would die, leaving the words I maddened for unspoken. Brutally, in my torment, I urged him on. “He--wouldn’t give it up. I rushed at him--he put it in his mouth--and--as I seized him, tried to swallow it--and choked. It had stuck at--the entrance to his gullet. In a few moments--in his state he was too--weak to expel it--he was dead. Perhaps--I might have saved him--but the trinket--the beautiful trinket!” My heart seemed scarcely to beat as I listened. At last I knew the truth--knew it wicked and inhuman; yet--thank God--less atrocious than I had dreaded. “But afterward,” I whispered--“afterward?” “There was a plan,” he moaned, and his speech came with difficulty, “inspired me. I dissuaded--your father--from encouraging--any inquiry. A post-mortem, I knew--would lay open the secret--and lose me--the cameo. He was buried--on my certificate. I got--the man--George White--under my thumb--fed him on fire--lent him money--made him--my tool. One dark--stormy--night--we opened the grave--the coffin. The devil--lent a hand. A new grave--had to be dug--a foot away. It was only--necessary--to--make a hori--horizontal opening--in the intervening soil. I had--my tools--and sliced open the dead boy’s throat--and found what I wanted. Only the sexton knew. Nothing--afterward--would persuade--the mad fool--that the boy--hadn’t been buried alive--and that--I--hadn’t murdered him. Only his fear--of me--kept his mouth--shut. This is--the truth.” He lay quite still, exhausted with his long, cruel effort. I touched him gently with my hand. “As I hope for rest myself,” I said, “I forgive you, now that you have spoken, for all this long, hideous misery. The treasure you staked against your soul is passed in fire and water and lost forever. Nothing remains to you here; and, for the future--oh, pray, man, pray, while there is time!” My voice broke in a sob. He strove to lift himself, leaning upon his hand, and immediately his mouth was choked with blood. “Where’s he?” he cried, in a stifled voice--“Down there?” “That way he went. The waters have him now--him, and my brother Jason, who was on the wheel also when you raised the hatch. God knows, their bodies may be miles away by this time.” He looked up at me with an awful expression; then, without another word, dragged himself inch by inch along the floor to the pit mouth and, reaching it, looked down--and immediately a great sputtering cry burst from him: “Who put that there?--that? the miniature? I gave it to--who did it, I say? It’s a trick! My soul burns--it burns already! Tear it off! My own portrait--Minna!” Thus and in such manner I heard my mother’s name spoken for the first time; felt the awful foundering truth burst upon my heart. Uttering it, the soul of this fearful man tore free with a last dying scream of agony, and he dropped upon his face over the threshold of the running vault.