f its motives---alleging, as a reason for his frankness,
that though much of what he confessed could only have attached to him by
suspicion, yet such suspicion would have been sufficient to deprive
him of Leicester's confidence, and to destroy all his towering plans of
ambition. "I was not born," he said, "to drag on the remainder of life a
degraded outcast; nor will I so die that my fate shall make a holiday to
the vulgar herd."

From these words it was apprehended he had some design upon himself, and
he was carefully deprived of all means by which such could be carried
into execution. But like some of the heroes of antiquity, he carried
about his person a small quantity of strong poison, prepared probably
by the celebrated Demetrius Alasco. Having swallowed this potion
over-night, he was found next morning dead in his cell; nor did he
appear to have suffered much agony, his countenance presenting, even in
death, the habitual expression of sneering sarcasm which was predominant
while he lived. "The wicked man," saith Scripture, "hath no bands in his
death."

The fate of his colleague in wickedness was long unknown. Cumnor Place
was deserted immediately after the murder; for in the vicinity of what
was called the Lady Dudley's Chamber, the domestics pretended to hear
groans, and screams, and other supernatural noises. After a certain
length of time, Janet, hearing no tidings of her father, became the
uncontrolled mistress of his property, and conferred it with her hand
upon Wayland, now a man of settled character, and holding a place in
Elizabeth's household. But it was after they had been both dead for some
years that their eldest son and heir, in making some researches about
Cumnor Hall, discovered a secret passage, closed by an iron door, which,
opening from behind the bed in the Lady Dudley's Chamber, descended to a
sort of cell, in which they found an iron chest containing a quantity
of gold, and a human skeleton stretched above it. The fate of Anthony
Foster was now manifest. He had fled to this place of concealment,
forgetting the key of the spring-lock; and being barred from escape by
the means he had used for preservation of that gold, for which he had
sold his salvation, he had there perished miserably. Unquestionably the
groans and screams heard by the domestics were not entirely imaginary,
but were those of this wretch, who, in his agony, was crying for relief
and succour.

The news of the Countess's drea