Doctor Remy, meanwhile, had made all possible speed from the Rat-Hole to the bedside of a third patient; in order that his time, on that night, might seem to be sufficiently¹ accounted for by his professional visits. His horse was swift, and he had not spared it in his recent expedition; it would seem impossible that he should have been at points so wide apart, within so short a time. By this means he expected to secure himself from Justice, in her human shape; of her divine form, he had no thought nor fear. Yet, all the way, a voice from the Past, which sounded curiously² like his own, kept echoing in his ears, with a dull, dead intonation,—"Crime is a mistake."

Well, suppose that it was, he had committed no crime. He had merely placed a particular powder, among many others, where a drunken old man, whose life was of no moment to anybody, could take it or not, at pleasure; he had altered a will in such manner as to give him absolute, instead of partial, control of a certain property, which he intended to use for the advance of science and the benefit of the race; and he had provided for the temporary elimination³ from affairs of a person likely to obstruct⁴ their proper sequence. That was all. What was there in it to cause such a chill depression of spirits,—such an unreasoning dread⁵ of—he knew not what?

Nothing, we may be sure, that was patent to the doctor's science. Regarding right merely as another term for custom, policy, expediency⁶, and conscience as a softer name for cowardice⁷, he was not likely to discern clearly, nor explain correctly, phenomena⁸ by which even a lost soul now and then asserts itself as of another nature than its tabernacle of dust, subject to other laws, responsive to other influences, thrilled with other

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