satisfaction of
having visited on that woman's head the evil she brought on that sweet lady
who died by her hands. Then did her beautiful face beam before me in full
contrast with that of the hag who had led me to ruin, to misery, to hell.
Every thought inflamed me more and more, and on I flew to the relief of my
burning brain. Wretch! How little did I think that, even in meditating her
death, who deserved that punishment, I was only adding more and more power
to my burning conscience? But all calculation of future accidents died
amidst my thirst of vengeance. Breathless I hurried on. I had a dagger in
my hand ready for the work of death. At a turn of a beech wood, I saw her
sitting by the road-side. She was drinking spirits; and, as I approached, I
heard her muttering strange words--yet she was not intoxicated. She was
only under the power of the demons that ruled her. Her back was to me, and
she knew not of my approach. I saw her take out the money and jewels she
had stolen from me, and for which, by her advice, I had sold my soul to
Satan. The sight again brought before me the horrid crime I had committed.
I saw the sweet lady before me, extended in the grasp of death; and
conscience, with a thousand fangs, tore at my heart. I grasped the dagger
firmer and firmer as she counted the money, and wrought myself up to the
pitch of a demon's fury. I advanced quietly. She burst into a loud laugh as
she finished the counting of the gold. 'Ha, ha, ha!' she cried--'I
have'--she would have said 'outwitted him,' but my dagger fixed the word in
her death-closed jaws. I struck her to the heart through her back, and the
word 'outwitted' died in her throat. She lay at my feet a corpse. I threw
the body in a ditch, and took up the money and jewels for which I had sold
my soul. I would have cast them away; but the devil again danced in the
faces of the gold coins. I put them in my pocket. The gold again corrupted
me. I drowned my conscience in drink at the next inn. I fled into England,
where I have lived by rapine ever since, until the other day, when I
returned to Scotland to meet the fate I so well deserve, from the hands of
the son of those I had injured. Of my old master I have never heard
anything. If he is alive, he is still in France."

Life seemed only to have been prolonged until he had made the horrid
disclosure; for he fell into convulsions and expired, soon after the
Colonel, whose wound had become stiff and painful, had le