ose less
concerned, especially as he was compelled to avoid communicating his
sentiments with any one else; and the catastrophe would in such a case
be but the natural consequence of that superstitious remorse which has
conducted so many criminals to suicide or the gallows. If the
fellow-traveller of Mr. Clerk be not allowed this degree of credit, he
must at least be admitted to have displayed a singular talent for the
composition of the horrible in fiction. The tale, properly detailed,
might have made the fortune of a romancer.

I cannot forbear giving you, as congenial to this story, another
instance of a guilt-formed phantom, which made considerable noise about
twenty years ago or more. I am, I think, tolerably correct in the
details, though I have lost the account of the trial. Jarvis
Matcham--such, if I am not mistaken, was the name of my hero--was
pay-sergeant in a regiment, where he was so highly esteemed as a steady
and accurate man that he was permitted opportunity to embezzle a
considerable part of the money lodged in his hands for pay of soldiers,
bounty of recruits (then a large sum), and other charges which fell
within his duty. He was summoned to join his regiment from a town where
he had been on the recruiting service, and this perhaps under some shade
of suspicion. Matcham perceived discovery was at hand, and would have
deserted had it not been for the presence of a little drummer lad, who
was the only one of his party appointed to attend him. In the
desperation of his crime he resolved to murder the poor boy, and avail
himself of some balance of money to make his escape. He meditated this
wickedness the more readily that the drummer, he thought, had been put
as a spy on him. He perpetrated his crime, and changing his dress after
the deed was done, made a long walk across the country to an inn on the
Portsmouth road, where he halted and went to bed, desiring to be called
when the first Portsmouth coach came. The waiter summoned him
accordingly, but long after remembered that, when he shook the guest by
the shoulder, his first words as he awoke were: "My God! I did not kill
him."

Matcham went to the seaport by the coach, and instantly entered as an
able-bodied landsman or marine, I know not which. His sobriety and
attention to duty gained him the same good opinion of the officers in
his new service which he had enjoyed in the army. He was afloat for
several years, and behaved remarkably well in some ac