chamber.

"I retired to that room below from which a door leads into the cellar.
This door concealed me from your view as you passed. I thought upon the
spectacle which was about to present itself. In an exigence so
abrupt and so little foreseen, I was again subjected to the empire
of mechanical and habitual impulses. I dreaded the effects which this
shocking exhibition, bursting on your unprepared senses, might produce.

"Thus actuated, I stept swiftly to the door, and thrusting my head
forward, once more pronounced the mysterious interdiction. At that
moment, by some untoward fate, your eyes were cast back, and you saw
me in the very act of utterance. I fled through the darksome avenue at
which I entered, covered with the shame of this detection.

"With diligence, stimulated by a thousand ineffable emotions, I pursued
my intended journey. I have a brother whose farm is situated in the
bosom of a fertile desert, near the sources of the Leheigh, and thither
I now repaired."

Chapter XXIV

"Deeply did I ruminate on the occurrences that had just passed. Nothing
excited my wonder so much as the means by which you discovered my being
in the closet. This discovery appeared to be made at the moment when you
attempted to open it. How could you have otherwise remained so long in
the chamber apparently fearless and tranquil? And yet, having made
this discovery, how could you persist in dragging me forth: persist in
defiance of an interdiction so emphatical and solemn?

"But your sister's death was an event detestable and ominous. She had
been the victim of the most dreadful species of assassination. How, in a
state like yours, the murderous intention could be generated, was wholly
inconceivable.

"I did not relinquish my design of confessing to you the part which I
had sustained in your family, but I was willing to defer it till the
task which I had set myself was finished. That being done, I resumed the
resolution. The motives to incite me to this continually acquired
force. The more I revolved the events happening at Mettingen, the more
insupportable and ominous my terrors became. My waking hours and my
sleep were vexed by dismal presages and frightful intimations.

"Catharine was dead by violence. Surely my malignant stars had not made
me the cause of her death; yet had I not rashly set in motion a machine,
over whose progress I had no controul, and which experience had shewn me
was infinite in power? Every day