ing me to the harbor. If I told her that the men
were on board, she might answer, "Why not employ one of your sailors
to bring the money to me at the house?" I took care to anticipate the
suggestion in making my reply.

"They may be honest men," I said, watching her carefully; "but I don't
know them well enough to trust them with money."

To my surprise, she watched me just as carefully on her side, and
deliberately repeated her question:

"Are the sailors on board the boat?"

I informed her that the captain and crew slept in the boat, and paused
to see what would follow. My reply seemed to rouse her resolution. After
a moment's consideration, she turned toward the place at which the child
was waiting for us. "Let us go, as you insist on it," she said, quietly.
I made no further remark. Side by side, in silence we followed Elfie on
our way to the boat.

Not a human creature passed us in the streets; not a light glimmered
on us from the grim black houses. Twice the child stopped, and (still
keeping slyly out of her mother's reach) ran back to me, wondering at
my silence. "Why don't you speak?" she asked. "Have you and mamma
quarreled?"

I was incapable of answering her--I could think of nothing but my
contemplated crime. Neither fear nor remorse troubled me. Every better
instinct, every nobler feeling that I had once possessed, seemed to
be dead and gone. Not even a thought of the child's future troubled my
mind. I had no power of looking on further than the fatal leap from the
boat: beyond that there was an utter blank. For the time being--I can
only repeat it, my moral sense was obscured, my mental faculties were
thrown completely off their balance. The animal part of me lived and
moved as usual; the viler animal instincts in me plotted and planned,
and that was all. Nobody, looking at me, would have seen anything but a
dull quietude in my face, an immovable composure in my manner. And yet
no madman was fitter for restraint, or less responsible morally for his
own actions, than I was at that moment.

The night air blew more freshly on our faces. Still led by the child, we
had passed through the last street--we were out on the empty open space
which was the landward boundary of the harbor. In a minute more we
stood on the quay, within a step of the gunwale of the boat. I noticed
a change in the appearance of the harbor since I had seen it last.
Some fishing-boats had come in during my absence. They moored, some