tearing out our throats; and, father, I cried so long, that I thought you never would come. And now—Oh God! oh God!”—as he felt the hands of the frantic wretch grasping his throat,—“are you the wolf?”

——

“Fortunately those hands were powerless from the very convulsion of the agony that prompted their desperate effort. The daughters had swooned from horror,—and their swoon appeared like death. The child had the cunning to counterfeit death also, and lay extended and stopping his breath under the fierce but faultering gripe that seized his young throat—then relinquished—then grasped it again—and then relaxed its hold as at the expiration of a spasm.

“When all was over, as the wretched father thought, he retreated from the chamber. In doing so, he stumbled over the corse-like form of his wife.—A groan announced that the sufferer was not dead. “What does this mean?” said Walberg, staggering in his delirium,—“does the corse reproach me for murder?—or does one surviving breath curse me for the unfinished work?”

“As he spoke, he placed his foot on his wife’s body. At this moment, a loud knock was heard at the door. “They are come!” said Walberg, whose frenzy hurried him rapidly through the scenes of an imaginary murder, and the consequence of a judicial process. “Well!—come in—knock again, or lift the latch—or enter as ye list—here I sit amid the bodies of my wife and children—I have murdered them—I confess it—ye come to drag me to torture, I know—but never—never can your tortures inflict on me more than the agony of seeing them perish by hunger before my eyes. Come in—come in—the deed is done!—The corse of my wife is at my foot, and the blood of my children is on my hands—what have I further to fear?” But while the wretched man spoke thus, he sunk sullenly on his chair, appearing to be employed in wiping from his fingers the traces of blood with which he imagined they were stained. At length the knocking at the door became louder,—the latch was lifted,—and three figures entered the apartment in which Walberg sat. They advanced slowly,—two from age and exhaustion,—and the third from strong emotion. Walberg heeded them not,—his eyes were fixed,—his hands locked in each other;—nor did he move a limb as they approached.

“Do you not know us?” said the foremost, holding up a lanthern which he held in his hand. Its light fell on a groupe worthy the pencil of a Rembrandt. The room lay in complete darkness, except where that strong and unbroken light fell. It glared on the rigid and moveless obduracy of Walberg’s despair, 

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