ttended in distress. As I hurried along, I took little
time to think of the object of my call; but I suspected, either that
Colonel P---- had got some notice of my having secretly visited,
in my professional capacity, his wife, and being therefore privy to
his design--a state of opposing circumstances, which he was now to
endeavour in some way to counteract--or that, finding, from the
extremity to which his wife was reduced, that he was necessitated to
call a doctor, as a kind of cloak or cover to his cruel act, he had thus
made a virtue of necessity, when, alas! it would be too late for my
rendering the unfortunate creature any service. "He shall not, however,
escape," muttered I, vehemently, through my teeth, as I proceeded. "He
little knows that he is now calling to his assistance the man that shall
hang him."

I soon arrived at the house, and rung the front door bell. The same
powdered lackey who had preceded me, opened the door. I was led up two
pair of stairs, and found myself in the same lobby with which I had
already become somewhat familiar. I proceeded forward, thinking I was
destined for the sick chamber of the lady; but the servant opened a door
immediately next to that of her room, and ushered me into an apartment
furnished in an elegant style, but much inferior to that occupied by his
wife. In a bed lay a man of a genteel, yet sinister cast of countenance,
with a large aquiline nose, and piercing black eyes. He appeared very
pale and feverish, and threw upon me that anxious eye which we often
find in patients who are under the first access of a serious disease;
as if nature, while she kept her secret from the understanding,
communicated it to the feelings, whose eloquence, expressed through the
senses, we can often read with great facility. I knew, in an instant,
that he was committed, by a relentless hand, to suffering, in all
likelihood, in the form of a fever. He told me he was Colonel P----, and
that, having been very suddenly taken ill, he had become alarmed for
himself, and sent for me to administer to him my professional services.
I looked at him intently; but he construed my stare into the eagerness
of professional investigation. At that instant, a piercing scream rang
through the house, and made my ears tingle. I asked him who had uttered
that scream, which must have come from some creature in the very
extremity of agony, and made an indication as if I would hasten to
administer relief to the vict