hat it will come to.'

He groaned, and rocked himself, and looking up for the first time, said,
in a low, hollow voice:

'Eight-and-twenty years! Eight-and-twenty years! He has never changed
in all that time, never grown older, nor altered in the least degree.
He has been before me in the dark night, and the broad sunny day; in the
twilight, the moonlight, the sunlight, the light of fire, and lamp,
and candle; and in the deepest gloom. Always the same! In company, in
solitude, on land, on shipboard; sometimes leaving me alone for months,
and sometimes always with me. I have seen him, at sea, come gliding in
the dead of night along the bright reflection of the moon in the calm
water; and I have seen him, on quays and market-places, with his hand
uplifted, towering, the centre of a busy crowd, unconscious of the
terrible form that had its silent stand among them. Fancy! Are you real?
Am I? Are these iron fetters, riveted on me by the smith's hammer, or
are they fancies I can shatter at a blow?'

The blind man listened in silence.

'Fancy! Do I fancy that I killed him? Do I fancy that as I left the
chamber where he lay, I saw the face of a man peeping from a dark door,
who plainly showed me by his fearful looks that he suspected what I
had done? Do I remember that I spoke fairly to him--that I drew
nearer--nearer yet--with the hot knife in my sleeve? Do I fancy how HE
died? Did he stagger back into the angle of the wall into which I had
hemmed him, and, bleeding inwardly, stand, not fail, a corpse before
me? Did I see him, for an instant, as I see you now, erect and on his
feet--but dead!'

The blind man, who knew that he had risen, motioned him to sit down
again upon his bedstead; but he took no notice of the gesture.

'It was then I thought, for the first time, of fastening the murder upon
him. It was then I dressed him in my clothes, and dragged him down
the back-stairs to the piece of water. Do I remember listening to the
bubbles that came rising up when I had rolled him in? Do I remember
wiping the water from my face, and because the body splashed it there,
in its descent, feeling as if it MUST be blood?

'Did I go home when I had done? And oh, my God! how long it took to do!
Did I stand before my wife, and tell her? Did I see her fall upon the
ground; and, when I stooped to raise her, did she thrust me back with a
force that cast me off as if I had been a child, staining the hand with
which she clasped my wri