at this time dangerously ill. For a
fortnight it had been the custom of the parents to sit up with it on
alternate nights, this night it being the father's regular turn to
perform that duty; but his trip of twenty-five or thirty miles had
fatigued him so much that it was judged best for his wife to relieve
him,--his slumbers being usually so profound as to be almost lethargic,
so that, when once fairly asleep, the loudest noises even in the same
room would fail to arouse him, and it being feared, therefore, that the
little patient might suffer, if left to his care in his present state of
weariness. In the same room slept a young negro girl, whose duty it was
to carry the child into the open air when occasion required,--an office
which Fanny herself had more than once performed. The reader will note
how ingeniously every one of these circumstances was woven into the
girl's scheme of death, and how each was made subservient to the end in
view.

* * * * *

At ten o'clock on the night of the 18th of July, 17--, everything had
become quiet about that lonely farm-house, so completely isolated in the
midst of its wide plantation that the barking of the dogs at the nearest
dwellings was barely heard in the profound stillness. A dim light, as
if from a deeply shaded candle, shone from one of the casements to the
right of the hall-door, showing where the parents watched by the bed of
their suffering infant. Along the high-road, which, a few rods in front,
stretched white and silent in the moonlight between its long lines of
worm-fences, a solitary traveller on horseback was journeying at this
hour. This gentleman afterward remembered being more than usually
impressed by the air of peace and repose that reigned about the place,
as he rode under the tall locust-trees which skirted the yard and cast
their dark shadows over into the highway. But he did not see a female
form flitting furtively from the negro-quarters in the rear, toward the
house; and a shade of suspicion might have crossed his mind, had he
glanced back a moment later and beheld that form approach the lighted
window with stealthy, cautious steps, and peer long and intently through
the partially drawn curtains upon the scene within, then, stooping low,
glide along the moonlit wall and disappear beneath the short flight of
wooden steps that led up to the front-door.

Here ensconced, safe from observation, the murderess lay listening to