equences; and, so far at least as
relates to you, I am determined to do it. I know the price, and--I will
make the purchase.

"You must swear," said he. "You must attest every sacrament, divine and
human, never to disclose what I am now to tell you."--He dictated the
oath, and I repeated it with an aching heart. I had no power to offer a
word of remark.

"This confidence," said he, "is of your seeking, not of mine. It is
odious to me, and is dangerous to you."

Having thus prefaced the disclosure he had to make, he paused. He seemed
to collect himself as for an effort of magnitude. He wiped his face with
his handkerchief. The moisture that incommoded him appeared not to be
tears, but sweat.

"Look at me. Observe me. Is it not strange that such a one as I should
retain lineaments of a human creature? I am the blackest of villains. I
am the murderer of Tyrrel. I am the assassin of the Hawkinses."

I started with terror, and was silent.

"What a story is mine! Insulted, disgraced, polluted in the face of
hundreds, I was capable of any act of desperation. I watched my
opportunity, followed Mr. Tyrrel from the rooms, seized a sharp-pointed
knife that fell in my way, came behind him, and stabbed him to the
heart. My gigantic oppressor rolled at my feet.

"All are but links of one chain. A blow! A murder! My next business was
to defend myself, to tell so well-digested a lie as that all mankind
should believe it true. Never was a task so harrowing and intolerable!

"Well, thus far fortune favoured me; she favoured me beyond my desire.
The guilt was removed from me, and cast upon another; but this I was to
endure. Whence came the circumstantial evidence against him, the broken
knife and the blood, I am unable to tell. I suppose, by some miraculous
accident, Hawkins was passing by, and endeavoured to assist his
oppressor in the agonies of death. You have heard his story; you have
read one of his letters. But you do not know the thousandth part of the
proofs of his simple and unalterable rectitude that I have known. His
son suffered with him; that son, for the sake of whose happiness and
virtue he ruined himself, and would have died a hundred times.--I have
had feelings, but I cannot describe them.

"This it is to be a gentleman! a man of honour! I was the fool of fame.
My virtue, my honesty, my everlasting peace of mind, were cheap
sacrifices to be made at the shrine of this divinity. But, what is
worse, there is nothi