paths of
the garden, and from time to time gave vent to the tumult of my thoughts
in involuntary exclamations, I felt as if my animal system had undergone
a total revolution. My blood boiled within me. I was conscious to a kind
of rapture for which I could not account. I was solemn, yet full of
rapid emotion, burning with indignation and energy. In the very tempest
and hurricane of the passions, I seemed to enjoy the most soul-ravishing
calm. I cannot better express the then state of my mind than by saying,
I was never so perfectly alive as at that moment.

This state of mental elevation continued for several hours, but at
length subsided, and gave place to more deliberate reflection. One of
the first questions that then occurred was, what shall I do with the
knowledge I have been so eager to acquire? I had no inclination to turn
informer. I felt what I had had no previous conception of, that it was
possible to love a murderer, and, as I then understood it, the worst of
murderers. I conceived it to be in the highest degree absurd and
iniquitous, to cut off a man qualified for the most essential and
extensive utility, merely out of retrospect to an act which, whatever
were its merits, could not be retrieved.

This thought led me to another, which had at first passed unnoticed. If
I had been disposed to turn informer, what had occurred amounted to no
evidence that was admissible in a court of justice. Well then, added I,
if it be such as would not be admitted at a criminal tribunal, am I sure
it is such as I ought to admit? There were twenty persons besides myself
present at the scene from which I pretend to derive such entire
conviction. Not one of them saw it in the light that I did. It either
appeared to them a casual and unimportant circumstance, or they thought
it sufficiently accounted for by Mr. Falkland's infirmity and
misfortunes. Did it really contain such an extent of arguments and
application, that nobody but I was discerning enough to see?

But all this reasoning produced no alteration in my way of thinking. For
this time I could not get it out of my mind for a moment: "Mr. Falkland
is the murderer! He is guilty! I see it! I feel it! I am sure of it!"
Thus was I hurried along by an uncontrollable destiny. The state of my
passions in their progressive career, the inquisitiveness and impatience
of my thoughts, appeared to make this determination unavoidable.

An incident occurred while I was in the garden, t