Part 4-To be continue..
"Shut up in the deserted mansion, aloof from all mankind, and engaged alone in such a struggle without any respite, in came to this that either he must die, or she. He knew it very well, and concentrated his strength against her feebleness. Hour upon hours he held her by the arm when her arm was black where he held it, and bade her, "Die!"
"It was done upon a windy morning, before sunrise. He computed the time to be half-past four; but his forgotten watch had run down, and he could not be sure. She had broken away from him in the night with loud and sudden cries the first of that kind to which she had given vent-and he had to put his hands over her mouth. Since then, she had been quiet in the corner of the panelling where she had sunk down; and he had left her, and had gone back with his folded arms and his knitted forehead to his chair.
"Paler in the pale light, more colorless than ever in the leaden dawn, he saw her coming, trailing herself along the floor towards him—a white wreck of hair, and dress, and wild eyes, pushing itself on by an irresolute and bending hand.
"Oh, forgive me! I will do anything. Oh, sir, pray tell me!
may live!"
"Die!"
"Her large eyes strained themselves with wonder and fear: wonder and fear changed to reproach; reproach to blank nothing. It was done. He was not at first so sure it was done, but that the morning sun was hanging jewels in her hair,he saw the diamond, emerald, and ruby, glittering among it in little points as he stood looking down at her-then he lifted her and laid her on her bed.
"She was soon laid in the ground. And now they were all gone, and he had compensated himself well.
"He had a mind to travel. Not that he meant to waste his money, for he was a pinching man and liked his money dearly
(like nothing else indeed), but, that to turn his back upon ic and have done with it. But the house was worth money, and money must not be thrown away. He determined to sell it before he went. That it might look the less wretched and bring a better price, he hired some laborers to work in the overgrown garden, to cut out the dead wood, trim the ivy that drooped in heavy masses over the windows and gables, and clear the walks in which the weeds were growing mid-leg high.
He worked himself along with them. He worked later than they did, and one evening at dust, was left working alone, with his billhook in his hand one autumn evening, when the bride was five weeks dead.
"It grows too dark to work longer," he said to himself, "I must give over for the night."
"He detested the house, and was loath to enter it. He looked at the dark porch waiting for him like a tomb, and felt that it was an accursed house. near to the porch, and near to where he stood, was a tree whose branches waved before the old bay window of the bride's chamber, where it had been done. The tree swung suddenly, and made him start. It swung again, although the night was still. Looking up into it, he saw a figure among the branches.
"It was the figure of a young man. The face looked down as his looked up; the branches cracked and swayed; the figur rapidly descended, and slid upon its feet before him. A slende youth to about her age, with long light brown hair.
"What thief are you?" he said, seizing the youth by the colla
"The young man, in shaking himself free, swung him a blc with his arm across the face and throat. They closed, but t young man got from him and stepped back, crying with gr engerness and horror, "Don't touch me! I should not be touch by the devil!"
"He stood still with his billhook in his hand, looking at the young man. For the young man's look was the counterpart of her last look, and he had not expected ever to see that again.
"I am no thief. Even if were, I would not have a coin of your wealth, if it would buy me the Indies. You murderer!
"What!"
"I climbed it," said the young man, pointing up into the tree, "for the first time, high four years ago. I climbed it to lock at her. I saw her. I spoke to her. I have climbed it many a time to watch and listen for her. I was a boy, hidden among its leaves when from that bay window she gave me this!"
"He showed a tress of flaxen hair, tied with a mourning
ribbon.
"Her life." said the young man, "was a life of mourning She gave me this, as a token of it, and a sign that she was dead to everyone but you. If I had been older, if I had seen her sooner, I might have saved her from you. But she was fast in the web when I first climbed the tree, and what could I do then to break it!"
"In saying these words, he burst into a fit of sobbing and crying, weakly at first, then passionately. "Murderer! 1 climbed the tree on the night when you brought her back. I heard her from the tree, speak of the deathwatch at the door. I was three times in the tree while you were shut up with her, slowly killing her. I saw her from the tree, lie dead upon her bed. I have watched you, from the tree, for proofs and traces of your guilt. The manner of it is a mystery to me yet, but I will pursue until you have rendered up your life to the hangman. You shall never, until then, be rid of me. I loved her! I can know no relenting feeling towards you. Murderer, I loved her!"
"The youth was barcheaded, his hat having fluttered away in his descent from the tree. He moved towards the gate. He had to pass him to get to it. There was breadth for two old-fashioned carriages abreast; and the youth's abhorrence, openly expressed in every feature of his face and limb of his body, and very hard to bear, had verge enough to keep itself at a distance in. He (by which I mean the other) had not stirred hand or foot, since he had stood still to look at the boy. He faced round. now, to follow him with his eyes. As the back of the bare light brown head was turned to him, he saw a red curve stretch from his hand to it. He knew, before he threw the billhook, where it had alighted—1 say, had alighted and not would alight; for, to his clear perception the thing was done before he did it. It cleft the head, and it remained there, and the boy lay on his face.
"He buried the body in the night at the foot of a tree. As soon as it was light in the morning, he worked at turning all the ground near the tree, and hacking and hewing at the neighbouring bushes and undergrowth. When the labourers came, there was nothing suspicious, and nothing suspected.
"But, he had, in a moment, defeated all his precautions, and destroyed the triumph of the scheme he had so long concerted, and so successfully worked out. He had got rid of the bride, and he acquired her fortune without endangering his life; bur now, for a death by which he had gained nothing he had evermore to live with a rope round his neck.
"Beyond this, he was chained to the house of gloom an: horror, which he could not endure. Being afraid to sell it or quit it, lest discovery should be made, he was forced to live in it. He hired two old people, man and wife, for his servants; and dwelled in it, and dreaded it. His great difficulty, for a long time, was the garden. Whether he should keep it trim, whether he should suffer it to fall into its former state of neglect, what would be least likely way of attracting attention to it?
"He took the middle course of gardening himself, in his evening leisure, and of then calling the old serving man to help him; but of never letting him work there alone. And he made the could sit and see it was safe.
"As the changed, and the tree changed, mind perceived that always changing. the leafy time, boughs were growing into the form they made the shape him in the In time that they came down from the framing telltale on the path, or that they had themselves into churchyard mound above the grave. In the winter, when the trees were bare, he perceived that the boughs swung at him ghost the blow the young had given, that they threatened him openly. In the spring, when the sap was mounting in the trunk, he asked himself, dried-up particles of blood mounting with to make more obviously that year than last, the leaf-screened of the youngman, swinging in the wind?
he turned his money over and over, and still over. He was in the dark trade, and gold dust trade, most secret trades that yielded great returns. In ten years, he had turned his money over so many times that the traders and shippers who had dealings with him, absolutely did not once-when they declared that he had increased his fortune twelve hundred
"He possessed his riches one hundred years ago, when people could be lost easily. He had heard who the youth was, from hearing of the search that was made after him; but it died away, and the youth was forgotten.
"The annual round of changes in the tree had been repeated ten times since the night of the burial at its foot, when there was a great thunderstorm over the place. It broke at midnight, and raged until morning. The first intelligence he heard from his old serving man that morning was that the tree had been struck by lightning.