and his tongue seemed to him to swell and grow larger than his
mouth, and refused to move, as he said at length, in a thick, choked
voice,--

"It was I that killed him!"

"Whom?" asked Gesualdo, whilst his own heart stood still. Without
hearing the answer, he knew what it would be.

"Tasso, the miller,--my master," said the carter; and, having confessed
thus far, he recovered confidence and courage, and, in the rude,
involved, garrulous utterances common to his kind, he leaned his mouth
closer to Gesualdo's ear, and told, with a curious sort of pride in the
accomplishment of it, why and how it had been done.

"I wanted to go to South America," he muttered. "I have a cousin there,
and he says one makes money fast and works little. I had often wished to
take Tassilo's money, but I was always afraid. He locked it up as soon
as he took any, were it ever so little, and it never saw light again
till it went to the bank or was paid away for her finery. He wasted many
a good fifty-franc note on her back.

"Look you, the night before the feast of Peter and Paul, he had received
seven hundred francs in the day for wheat, and I saw him lock it up in
his bureau and say to his wife that he should take it to the town next
day. That was in the forenoon. At eventide they had a worse quarrel than
usual. She taunted him, and he threatened her. In the dawn I was
listening to hear him astir. He was up before dawn, and he unbarred and
opened the mill-house himself, and called to the foreman, and said he
was going to town, and told us what we were to do. 'I shall be away all
day,' he said. It was still dusky. I stole out after him without the men
seeing. I said to myself I would take this money from him as he went
along the crossroads to take the diligence at Sant' Arturo. I did not
say to myself I would kill him, but I resolved to get the money. It was
enough to take one out to America and keep one awhile when one got out
there. So I made up my mind. Money is at the bottom of most things. I
followed him half a mile before I could get my courage up. He did not
see me because of the canes. He was crossing that grass where the trees
are so thick, when I said to myself, 'Now or never!' Then I sprang on
him and stabbed him under the shoulder. He fell like a stone. I searched
him, but there was nothing in his pockets except a revolver loaded. I
think he had only made a feint of going to the town, thinking to come
back and find the lovers to