a
handful of embers that glowed in the bottom, as she had found them after
late use in the laundry. As she dropped the coal, Zillah looked
fearfully about from time to time; and once, when a mouse scampered
across the floor close by her, she started up with a smothered shriek;
but, even in her terror, blew out the lamp, which rattled in the
darkness some moments after, notwithstanding the efforts that she made
to still her shaking hands.

At last she struck a match, and kindled the light once more, and fell to
work again. A minute sufficed to heap the little furnace, and a faint
crackling at the bottom gave proof that the living embers underneath
were taking effect. When satisfied of this, she put out her lamp, took
up the furnace, and, though it was still hot from recent use, placed one
hand over the draft, that the fire might not ignite too rapidly, and
crept out of the cellar. Any person awake in the house, might have
traced the dark progress of this woman by a faint crackle, and the
sparks that shot now and then up through the black mass of coal, which
was kindling so fast, that the hand which she still kept upon the draft
was almost blistered.

She moved along the hall, noiselessly and rapid as death. The sparks
that leaped up from the furnace, gave all the light she had, and more
than she desired; for many a time before had she threaded the same
passage, rehearsing the terrible deed she was enacting. She paused
directly in front of Mabel Harrington's boudoir, and laid her hand upon
the latch without a moment's search, as if it had been broad daylight.

She did not pause in the boudoir, but stole through, shuddering beneath
the pale light of that alabaster lamp, as if it had distilled poison
over her.

There was no stir in the chamber when she entered it. The low regular
breathing of some one asleep upon the bed which stood entirely in
shadow, was all the sound that reached her when she paused to listen.
From without she could hear nothing, not even the sharp whisperings of
the wind; for that day her own hands had calked the windows with
singular care, and besides that, rich curtains muffled them from floor
to ceiling.

Zillah dared not look toward the bed, but with the stealthy movements of
a panther she crept to the fire-place sealed up with a marble slab, and
placing the furnace on the hearth, slunk away from the chamber and
through the boudoir, closing both doors cautiously behind her.

After that, she