en I reached my lodgings it was beginning to
rain. I threw open the window of my room, and then flung
myself on my bed in a state which baffles all description. The
prisoner in Newgate, who has just had his sentence read to
him, cannot feel himself more inevitably condemned to death
than I did at that moment. If before the next morning I did
not destroy myself, I was nothing but a common thief. I knew
that the only circumstance which distinguished the act I had
committed from other crimes of the same sort, was, that
detection was so inevitable, the evidence against me so
indisputable, that it could only have been the act of a man
who had made up his mind to die.

"I was to die, then, and by my own hand. Ellen, I do not
believe that I am a coward; I know I am not, and yet I
trembled dreadfully when death, real, actual, bloody death,
stood before me in unavoidable, almost tangible, shape; a
deadly sickness crept over my heart, and such a feebleness
into my limbs, that a worse terror seized me lest I should
faint and not recover till the moment when Harding should
arrive; that perhaps I should not have strength to load and
discharge the pistol; then a horrible vision passed before me
of arrest, trial, execution; of scenes to which all that had
tortured me some hours ago seemed but as child's play. I
started wildly from my bed, and flung my arms about to prove
to myself that I had yet life and strength enough to kill
myself. A racking pain shot across my head; I ground my teeth,
and then I felt a sudden impulse to laugh and to make mouths,
which felt very like going mad. I saw a bottle of laudanum on
the chimney-piece, and seized hold of it with desperate
eagerness; had it been full, I should have drunk every drop in
it; but as it was, there was only a small quantity, which
quieted me. I sat down by the window shivering with cold. The
heavy rain was driven in by sudden gusts of wind, and I
remained there till gradually, as the night grew darker and
the sedative began to take effect, I sunk into a heavy, stupid
kind of calmness. I started when the clock struck ten; and,
groping about the room, I found the match-box and struck a
light. I then went to my bureau; and, taking out of the drawer
my pistol-case, I placed it on the table, and then sat down to
write a few lines to my father. I gave him a short and
tolerably coherent account of what I had done, and begged him
to avert inquiry until he had procured the means of re