us to ourselves. We stooped and took from the body the
ill-gotten gains of the gambler. They amounted to an immense sum, and I
said to Marmaduke Bannerworth,--

"'Take you the whole of this money and proceed to your own home with it,
where you will be least suspected. Hide it in some place of great
secrecy, and to-morrow I will call upon you, when we will divide it, and
will consider of some means of safely exchanging the notes for gold.'

"He agreed to this, and placed the money in his pocket, after which it
became necessary that we should dispose of the body, which, if we did
not quickly remove, must in a few hours be discovered, and so,
perchance, accompanied by other criminating circumstances, become a
frightful evidence against us, and entail upon us all those consequences
of the deed which we were so truly anxious to escape from.

"It is ever the worst part of the murderer's task, that after he has
struck the blow that has deprived his victim of existence, it becomes
his frightful duty to secrete the corpse, which, with its dead eyes,
ever seems to be glaring upon him such a world of reproach.

"That it is which should make people pause ere they dipped their hands
in the blood of others, and that it is which becomes the first
retribution that the murderer has to endure for the deep crime that he
has committed.

"We tore two stakes from a hedge, and with their assistance we contrived
to dig a very superficial hole, such a hole as was only sufficient, by
placing a thin coating of earth over it, to conceal the body of the
murdered man.

"And then came the loathsome task of dragging him into it--a task full
of horror, and from which we shrunk aghast; but it had to be done, and,
therefore, we stooped, and grasping the clothes as best we might, we
dragged the body into the chasm we had prepared for its reception. Glad
were we then to be enabled to throw the earth upon it and to stamp upon
it with such vehemence as might well be supposed to actuate men deeply
anxious to put out of sight some dangerous and loathsome object.

"When we had completed this, and likewise gathered handsfull of dust
from the road, and dry leaves, and such other matter, to sprinkle upon
the grave, so as to give the earth an appearance of not having been
disturbed, we looked at each other and breathed from our toil.

"Then, and not till then, was it that we remembered that among other
things which the gambler had won of Marmaduke were the