hine which streamed in over the threshold, the poultry
which picked up the crumbs off the floor, all these homely and familiar
things seemed unreal to him, and were seen as through a mist.

This little narrow dwelling with the black cypress shadows falling
athwart it, which had once seemed to him the abode of perfect peace, now
seemed to imprison him, till his heart failed and died within him.

In the dead of night, at the end of the week, moved by an unconquerable
impulse which had haunted him the whole seven days, he rose, and lit a
lantern and let himself out of his own door noiselessly, stealthily, as
though he were on some guilty errand, and took the sexton's spade from
the tool-house, and went across the black shadows which stretched over
the grass, towards the place where the body of Tasso Tassilo had lain
dead. In the moonlight there stood tall and straight a column of green
leaves: it was the stately Lombardy poplar, which was spared by the
hatchet, because Marca was, so far as it understood anything, loyal in
its regret for the days that were gone. Many birds which had been for
hours sound asleep in its boughs flew out with a great whirr of wings
and with chirps of terror as the footfall of Gesualdo awakened and
alarmed them. He set his lantern down on the ground, for the rays of the
moon did not penetrate as far as the deep gloom the poplars threw around
them, and began to dig. He dug some little time without success: then
his spade struck against something which shone amidst the dry clay soil;
it was the knife. He took it up with a shudder. There were dark red
spots on the steel blade. It was a narrow, slightly-curved knife about
six inches long, such a knife as every Italian of the lower classes
carries every day, and with which most Italian murders are committed.

He looked at it long. If the inanimate thing could but have spoken,
could but have told, the act which it had done!

He, kneeling on the ground, gazed at it with a sickening fascination;
then he replaced it deeper down in the ground, and with his spade
smoothed the earth with which he covered it. The soil was so dry that it
did not show much trace of having been disturbed. Gravely he returned
homeward, convinced now of the truth of the confession made to him. Some
men met him on the road, country lads driving cattle early to a distant
fair: they saluted him with respect, but laughed when they had passed
him.

What had his reverence, they wond