here. What a picture! That blood-stained
butcher, with his dark face, crawling about those cellars, peering for
that woman! He dared not spend any more time; he must go back for the
money he hoped to find, his reward for this! All about the house he
searches, in bureau drawers, in trunks and boxes: he finds fifteen
dollars for his night's work! Several hundreds were lying between some
sheets folded at the bottom of a drawer in which he looked. But he
cannot stop for more thorough investigation; a dreadful haste pursues
him like a thousand fiends. He drags Anethe's stiffening body into the
house, and leaves it on the kitchen floor. If the thought crosses his
mind to set fire to the house and burn up his two victims, he dares
not do it: it will make a fatal bonfire to light his homeward way;
besides, it is useless, for Maren has escaped to accuse him, and the
time presses so horribly!

But how cool a monster is he! After all this hard work he must have
refreshment, to support him in the long row back to the land; knife
and fork, cup and plate, were found next morning on the table near
where Anethe lay; fragments of food which was not cooked in the house,
but brought from Portsmouth, were scattered about. Tidy Maren had left
neither dishes nor food when they went to bed. The handle of the
tea-pot which she had left on the stove was stained and smeared with
blood. Can the human mind conceive of such hideous _nonchalance_?
Wagner sat down in that room and ate and drank! It is almost beyond
belief! Then he went to the well with a basin and towels, tried to
wash off the blood, and left towels and basin in the well. He knows he
must be gone! It is certain death to linger. He takes his boat and
rows away toward the dark coast and the twinkling lights; it is for
dear life, now! What powerful strokes send the small skiff rushing
over the water!

There is no longer any moon, the night is far spent; already the east
changes, the stars fade; he rows like a madman to reach the land, but
a blush of morning is stealing up the sky, and sunrise is rosy over
shore and sea, when panting, trembling, weary, a creature accursed, a
blot on the face of the day, he lands at Newcastle--too late! Too
late! In vain he casts the dory adrift; she will not float away; the
flood tide bears her back to give her testimony against him, and
afterward she is found at Jaffrey's Point, near the "Devil's Den," and
the fact of her worn thole-pins noted. Wet, c