f housewives, Mrs. Janet Dodds--so
ill-requited for her devotion to her husband. Nay, he felt all this as a
reproof to him, and sorely and bitterly lamented the fatal act whereby
he had deprived of life the best of wives, and the most honest and
peaceful of womankind. Then the awe of divine vengeance deepened these
shadows of the soul till he became moody and melancholy, walking hither
and thither without an object, and in secluded places, looking fearfully
around him as if he expected every moment the spectre visitor of the
morning to appear before him. Nor was he less miserable at home, where
the growing hatred made matters worse and worse every hour, and where,
when the grey dawn came, he expected another visit and another scene of
the same description as the last.

Nearly a week had thus passed, and it was Sabbath morning. The
tinsmiths' hammers were silent, the noisy games of the urchins were
hushed, the street of the Bow resounded only occasionally to the sound
of a foot--all Edinburgh was, in short, under the solemnity enjoined by
the Calvinism so much beloved by the people; and surely the day might
have been supposed to be held in such veneration by ministering spirits,
sent down to earth to execute the purposes of Heaven, that no visit of
the feared shadow would disturb even the broken rest of the wicked. So
perhaps thought our couple; but their thoughts belied them, for just
again, as the dawn broke over the tops of the high houses, the
well-known tirl was heard at the door. Who was to open it? For days the
mind of the wife had been made up. She would not face that figure again;
no, if all the powers of the world were there to compel her; and as for
Thomas, conscience had reduced the firmness of a man who once upon a
time could kill to a condition of fear and trembling. Yet terrified as
he was, he considered that he was here under the obligation to obey
powers even higher than his conscience, and disobedience might bring
upon him some evil greater than that under which he groaned. So up he
got, trembling in every limb, and proceeding to the door, opened the
same. What he saw may be surmised, but what he felt no one ever knew,
for the one reason that he had never the courage to tell it, and for the
other that no man or woman was ever placed in circumstances from which
they could draw any conclusion which could impart even a distant
analogy. This much, however, was known: Thomas retreated instantly to
bed, and t