mercy at my hands. Did you think of the one, last chance
that you were losing, when you came to see her die? I watched _you,_ and
I watched _her._ I heard as much as you heard; I saw as much as you saw;
I know when she died, and how, as you know it; I shared her last moments
with you, to the very end. It was my fancy not to give her up, as your
sole possession, even on her death-bed: it is my fancy, now, not to let
you stand alone--as if her corpse was your property--over her grave!"

While he uttered the last words, I felt my self-possession returning.
I could not force myself to speak, as I would fain have spoken--I could
only move away, to leave him.

"Stop," he said, "what I have still to say concerns you. I have to tell
you, face to face, standing with you here, over her dead body, that
what I wrote from the hospital, is what I will do; that I will make your
whole life to come, one long expiation of this deformity;" (he pointed
to his face), "and of that death" (he set his foot once more on the
grave). "Go where you will, this face of mine shall never be turned away
from you; this tongue, which you can never silence but by a crime,
shall awaken against you the sleeping superstitions and cruelties of all
mankind. The noisome secret of that night when you followed us, shall
reek up like a pestilence in the nostrils of your fellow-beings, be
they whom they may. You may shield yourself behind your family and your
friends--I will strike at you through the dearest and the bravest
of them! Now you have heard me, go! The next time we meet, you shall
acknowledge with your own lips that I can act as I speak. Live the free
life which Margaret Sherwin has restored to you by her death--you will
know it soon for the life of Cain!"

He turned from the grave, and left me by the way that he had come;
but the hideous image of him, and the remembrance of the words he had
spoken, never left me. Never for a moment, while I lingered alone in
the churchyard; never, when I quitted it, and walked through the crowded
streets. The horror of the fiend-face was still before my eyes, the
poison of the fiend-words was still in my ears, when I returned to my
lodging, and found Ralph waiting to see me as soon as I entered my room.

"At last you have come back!" he said; "I was determined to stop till
you did, if I stayed all day. Is anything the matter? Have you got into
some worse difficulty than ever?"

"No, Ralph--no. What have you to tell