h mirrors, some of home design, some from Venice
or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were an army
of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of his own
steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And still, as
he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him, with a sickening
iteration, of the thousand faults of his design. He should have chosen a
more quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he should not have
used a knife; he should have been more cautious, and only bound and
gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have been more bold,
and killed the servant also; he should have done all things otherwise:
poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what
was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of
the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute
terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more
remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would
fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked
fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the
gallows, and the black coffin.

Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind like a
besieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some rumour of
the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge their
curiosity; and now, in all the neighbouring houses, he divined them
sitting motionless and with uplifted ear--solitary people, condemned to
spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now
startlingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties,
struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised
finger: every degree and age and humour, but all, by their own hearths,
prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him.
Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the clink of
the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and alarmed by
the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to stop the clocks. And then,
again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the very silence of the
place appeared a source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze the
passer-by; and he would step more boldly, and bustle aloud among the
contents of the shop, and imitate, with elaborate bravado, the
movements of a busy man at ease in his own house.

But he was now so pulled about by d