ther, tumbled on the
bed, scuffled round the room, but all in horrid silence; neither uttered
a sound, neither had a shoe on--but all was earnest, wicked,
death-dealing silence.

Ha! the desperate victim has the best of it; gripe harder, Jennings; she
has twisted her fingers in your neckcloth, and you yourself are choking:
fool! squeeze the swallow, can't you? try to make your fingers meet in
the middle--lower down, lower down, grasp the gullet, not the ears,
man--that's right; I told you so: tighter, tighter, tighter! again; ha,
ha, ha, bravo! bravo!--tighter, tighter, tighter!

At length the hideous fight was coming to an end--though a hungry
constrictor, battling with the huge rhinoceros, and crushing his mailed
ribs beneath its folds, could not have been so fierce or fearful; fewer
now, and fainter are her struggles; that face is livid blue--the eyes
have started out, and goggle horribly; the tongue protrudes, swollen and
black. Aha! there is another convulsive effort--how strong she is still!
can you hold her, Simon?--can he?--All the fiend possessed him now with
savage exultation: can he?--only look! gripe, gripe still, you are
conquering, strong man! she is getting weaker, weaker; here is your
reward, gold! gold! a mighty store uncounted; one more grasp, and it is
all your own--relent now, she hangs you. Come, make short work of it,
break her neck--gripe harder--back with her, back with here against the
bedstead: keep her down, down I say--she must not rise again. Crack!
went a little something in her neck--did you hear it? There's the
death-rattle, the last smothery complicated gasp--what, didn't you hear
that?

And the devil congratulated Simon on his victory.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE REWARD.

Till the wretch had done the deed, he scarcely knew that it was
doing. It was a horrid, mad excitement, where the soul had spread its
wings upon the whirlwind, and heeded not whither it was hurried. A
terrible necessity had seemed to spur him onwards all the while, and
one thing so succeeded to another, that he scarce could stop at any but
the first. From the moment he had hidden in the shower-bath (but for
God's interposing mercy), his doom appeared to have been
sealed--robbery, murder, false witness, and--damnation!

Crime is the rushing rapid, which, but for some kind miracle, inevitably
carries on through circling eddies, and a foamy swinging tide, to the
cataract of death and wo: haste, poor fisherman of