change of purpose, and accused him of fickleness and cowardice; and
declared that she had given suck, and knew how tender it was to love
the babe 'that milked her; but she would, while it was smiling in her
face, have plucked it from her breast, and dashed its brains out, if
she had so sworn to do it, as he had sworn to perform that murder. Then
she added, how practicable it was to lay the guilt of the deed upon the
drunken sleepy grooms. And with the velour of her tongue she so
chastised his sluggish resolutions, that he once more summoned up
courage to the bloody business.

So, taking the dagger in his hand, he softly stole in the dark to the
room where Duncan lay; and as he went, he thought he saw another dagger
in the air, with the handle towards him, and on the blade and at the
point of it drops of blood; but when he tried to grasp at it, it was
nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot and
oppressed brain and the business he had in hand.

Getting rid of this fear, he entered the king's room, whom he
despatched with one stroke of his dagger. Just as he had done the
murder, one of the grooms, who slept in the chamber, laughed in his
sleep, and the other cried: 'Murder,' which woke them both, but they
said a short prayer; one of them said: 'God bless us!' and the other
answered 'Amen'; and addressed themselves to sleep again. Macbeth, who
stood listening to them, tried to say 'Amen,' when the fellow said 'God
bless us!' but, though he had most need of a blessing, the word stuck
in his throat, and he could not pronounce it.

Again he thought he heard a voice which cried: 'Sleep no more: Macbeth
cloth murder sleep, the innocent sleep, that nourishes life.' Still it
cried: 'Sleep no more,' to all the house. 'Glamis hath murdered sleep,
and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more.'

With such horrible imaginations Macbeth returned to his listening wife,
who began to think he had failed of his purpose, and that the deed was
somehow frustrated. He came in so distracted a state, that she
reproached him with his want of firmness, and sent him to wash his
hands of the blood which stained them, while she took his dagger, with
purpose to stain the cheeks of the grooms with blood, to make it seem
their guilt.

Morning came, and with it the discovery of the murder, which could not
be concealed; and though Macbeth and his lady made great show of grief,
and the proofs against the gr