t him as he swept by and to have saved him
from a watery death. To my amazement, however--and even now, after this
lapse of time, my gorge rises at the very thought of it--the other did
not offer to help, but drew himself back. Before I could return my
eyes, the wretched suicide had passed out of sight and had vanished into
the darkness again. As he did so a pronounced chuckle of enjoyment
reached me from the man below--a burst of merriment so out of place and
so detestable that I could scarcely believe I heard aright. I can not
hope to make you understand how it affected me. A second later a fit of
blind fury overtook me, and, under the influence of it, I ran down the
steps and seized the murderer--for such I shall always consider him--by
the arm.

"Are you a man or a fiend," I cried in jerks, "that you could so allow
another to perish when you might have saved him? His death is upon your
conscience, brute and monster that you are!"

So extreme was my emotion that I trembled under it like a man with the
palsy.

Then the other turned his head and looked at me; and, as he did so, a
great shudder, accompanied by an indescribable feeling of nausea, passed
over me. What occasioned it I could not tell, nor could I remember
having felt anything of the kind before. When it departed, my eyes fixed
themselves on the individual before me. Connecting him in some way with
the unenviable sensation I had just experienced, I endeavoured to
withdraw them again, but in vain. The others gaze was riveted upon
me--so firmly, indeed, that it required but small imagination to believe
it eating into my brain. Good Heavens! how well I recollect that night
and every incident connected with it! I believe I shall remember it
through all eternity. If only I had known enough to have taken him by
the throat then and there, and had dashed his brains out on the stones,
or to have seized him in my arms and hurled him down the steps into the
river below, how much happier I should have been! I might have earned
eternal punishment, it is true, but I should at least have saved myself
and the world in general from such misery as the human brain can
scarcely realise. But I did not know, the opportunity was lost, and, in
that brief instant of time, millions of my fellow-creatures were
consigned unwittingly to their doom.

After long association with an individual, it is difficult, if not
impossible, to set down with any degree of exactness a description o