But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one

portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled
on the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a

strong hold on his credulity. The neighbour hearkening with white
face beside his window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible

surmise on the pavement - these could at worst suspect, they could
not know; through the brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds

could penetrate. But here, within the house, was he alone? He
knew he was; he had watched the servant set forth sweet-hearting,

in her poor best, 'out for the day' written in every ribbon and
smile. Yes, he was alone, of course; and yet, in the bulk of empty

house above him, he could surely hear a stir of delicatefooting -
he was surely conscious, inexplicably conscious of some presence.

Ay, surely; to every room and corner of the house his imagination
followed it; and now it was a faceless thing, and yet had eyes to

see with; and again it was a shadow of himself; and yet again
behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired with cunning and

hatred.
At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door

which still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the
skylight small and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light

that filtered down to the ground story was exceedingly faint, and
showed dimly on the threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip

of doubtfulbrightness, did there not hang wavering a shadow?
Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to

beat with a staff on the shop-door, accompanying his blows with
shouts and railleries in which the dealer was continually called

upon by name. Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man.
But no! he lay quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of

these blows and shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and
his name, which would once have caught his notice above the howling

of a storm, had become an empty sound. And presently the jovial
gentleman desisted from his knocking, and departed.

Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get
forth from this accusing neighbourhood, to plunge into a bath of

London multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that
haven of safety and apparentinnocence - his bed. One visitor had

come: at any moment another might follow and be more obstinate. To
have done the deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too

abhorrent a failure. The money, that was now Markheim's concern;
and as a means to that, the keys.

He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was
still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of

the mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of
his victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit

half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled,
on the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy

and inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more
significance to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders, and

turned it on its back. It was strangely light and supple, and the
limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddest postures.

The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as pale as wax,
and shockingly smeared with blood about one temple. That was, for

Markheim, the one displeasing circumstance. It carried him back,
upon the instant, to a certain fair-day in a fishers' village: a

gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare of
brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer;

and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the crowd and
divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the chief

place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen with
pictures, dismally designed, garishly coloured: Brown-rigg with her

apprentice; the Mannings with their murdered guest; Weare in the
death-grip of Thurtell; and a score besides of famous crimes. The

thing was as clear as an illusion; he was once again that little
boy; he was looking once again, and with the same sense of physical

revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still stunned by the
thumping of the drums. A bar of that day's music returned upon his

memory; and at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a
breath of nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must

instantly resist and conquer.
He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these

considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending
his mind to realise the nature and greatness of his crime. So

little a while ago that face had moved with every change of
sentiment, that pale mouth had spoken, that body had been all on

fire with governable energies; and now, and by his act, that piece
of life had been arrested, as the horologist, with interjected

finger, arrests the beating of the clock. So he reasoned in vain;
he could rise to no more remorseful consciousness; the same heart

which had shuddered before the painted effigies of crime, looked on
its realityunmoved. At best, he felt a gleam of pity for one who

had been endowed in vain with all those faculties that can make the
world a garden of enchantment, one who had never lived and who was

now dead. But of penitence, no, not a tremor.
With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found

the keys and advanced towards the open door of the shop. Outside,
it had begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the

roof had banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers
of the house were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the

ear and mingled with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim
approached the door, he seemed to hear, in answer to his own

cautious tread, the steps of another foot withdrawing up the stair.
The shadow still palpitated loosely on the threshold. He threw a

ton's weight of resolve upon his muscles, and drew back the door.
The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and

stairs; on the bright suit of armour posted, halbert in hand, upon
the landing; and on the dark wood-carvings, and framed pictures

that hung against the yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was
the beating of the rain through all the house that, in Markheim's

ears, it began to be distinguished into many different sounds.
Footsteps and sighs, the tread of regiments marching in the

distance, the chink of money in the counting, and the creaking of
doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to mingle with the patter of

the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of the water in the
pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him to the verge

of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by presences.
He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop, he heard

the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a great
effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and

followed stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how
tranquilly he would possess his soul! And then again, and

hearkening with ever fresh attention, he blessed himself for that
unresting sense which held the outposts and stood a trusty sentinel

upon his life. His head turned continually on his neck; his eyes,
which seemed starting from their orbits, scouted on every side, and

on every side were half-rewarded as with the tail of something
nameless vanishing. The four-and-twenty steps to the first floor

were four-and-twenty agonies.
On that first storey, the doors stood ajar, three of them like

three ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He
could never again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified

from men's observing eyes, he longed to be home, girt in by walls,
buried among bedclothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that

thought he wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers
and the fear they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It

was not so, at least, with him. He feared the laws of nature,
lest, in their callous and immutable procedure, they should

preserve some damning evidence of his crime. He feared tenfold
more, with a slavish, superstitions terror, some scission in the

continuity of man's experience, some wilful illegality of nature.
He played a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating

consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeated tyrant
overthrew the chess-board, should break the mould of their

succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when
the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might

befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and
reveal his doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout