That, then, shall be the test! So I determined. Edgerton must be

punished. There is no escape. But for her--if she does not seek

the earliest occasion to reveal the truth, she is guilty beyond

doubt--doomed beyond redemption.

I entered the house with difficulty. I was as feeble as if I had been

under the hands of the physician for weeks. A light was burning on

the staircase. I took it and went into the parlor, which I narrowly

examined. There were no remaining proofs of the late disorder. The

table was set against the wall. The chess-men were all gathered

up, and neatly put away in the box, which stood upon the mantel.

"There is proof of coolness and deliberation here!" I muttered

to myself, as I took my way up-stairs. When I entered my chamber,

I felt a pang, the fore-runner of a spasm. I had been for several

years afflicted with these spasms, in great or small degree. They

marked every singular mental excitement under which I labored. It

was no doubt one of these spasms which had seized and overpowered

me while I sat within the tree. Never before had I suffered from

one so severe; but the violence of this was naturally due to the

extreme of agony--as sudden as it was terrible--which seized upon

my soul. My physician had provided me with a remedy against these

attacks to which I was accustomed to resort. This, though a potent

remedy, was also a potent poison. It was a medicine called the

hydrocyanic or prussic acid. Five minims was a dose, but two drops

were death. I went to the medicine-case which stood beneath the

head of the bed, with the view to getting out the vial; but my wife

started up eagerly as I approached, and with trembling accents,

demanded what was the matter. She saw me covered with mud and

soaking with water. I told her that I had got wet coming homeward

and had slipped down the hill.

"Why did you stay so late--why not come home sooner, dear husband?"

"Hypocrite!" I muttered while stooping down for the chest.

"You are sick--you have your spasms!" she now said, rising from the

bed and offering to measure the medicine. This she had repeatedly

done before; but I was not now willing to trust her. Doubts of her

fidelity led to other doubts.

"If she is prepared to dishonor, she is prepared to destroy you!"

said my familiar.

This suggestion seized upon my brain, and while I measured out the

minims, the busy fiend reminded me that I grasped the bane as well

as the antidote in my hand. A stern, a terrible image of retributive

justice presented itself before my thoughts. The feeling of

an awful necessity grew strong within me. "Shall the adulterer

alone perish? Shall the adultress escape?" The fiend answered with

tremulous but stern passion--"She shall surely die!"




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