ity as before,--

"Yes, dead, damn him!"

As the assassin bends over the body of his fallen foe, he shows no sign
of contrition, for the cruel deed he has done. No feeling save that of
satisfied vengeance; no emotion that resembles remorse. On the
contrary, his cold animal eyes continue to sparkle with jealous hate;
while his hand has moved mechanically to the hilt of his knife, as
though he meant to mutilate the form he has laid lifeless. Its beauty,
even in death, seems to embitter his spirit!

But soon, a sense of danger comes creeping over him, and fear takes
shape in his soul. For, beyond doubt, he has done murder.

"No!" he says, in an effort at self-justification. "Nothing of the
sort. I've killed him; that's true; but he's had the chance to kill me.
They'll see that his gun's discharged; and here's his bullet gone
through the skirt of my coat. By thunder, 'twas a close shave!"

For a time he stands reflecting--his glance now turned towards the body,
now sent searchingly through the trees, as though in dread of some one
coming that way.

Not much likelihood of this. The spot is one of perfect solitude, as is
always a cypress forest. There is no path near, accustomed to be
trodden by the traveller. The planter has no business among those great
buttressed trunks. The woodman will never assail them with his axe.
Only a stalking hunter, or perhaps some runaway slave, is at all likely
to stray thither.

Again soliloquising, he says,--

"Shall I put a bold face upon it, and confess to having killed him? I
can say we met while out hunting; quarrelled, and fought--a fair fight;
shot for shot; my luck to have the last. Will that story stand?"

A pause in the soliloquy; a glance at the prostrate form; another, which
interrogates the scene around, taking in the huge unshapely trunks,
their long outstretched limbs, with the pall-like festoonery of Spanish
moss; a thought about the loneliness of the place, and its fitness for
concealing a dead body.

Like the lightning's flashes, all this flits through the mind of the
murderer. The result, to divert him from his half-formed resolution--
perceiving its futility.

"It won't do," he mutters, his speech indicating the change. "No, that
it won't! Better say nothing about what's happened. They're not likely
to look for him here..."

Again he glances inquiringly around, with a view to secreting the
corpse. He has made up his mind to this.

A sluggi