Part 20

The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely change: they brightened and softened with a tender triumph; and, even as they brightened, faded and dislimned[24]. But Markheim did not pause to watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door and went downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberly before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream, random as chance-medley—a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer; but on the farther side he perceived a quiet haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked into the shop, where the candle still burned by the dead body. It was strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind, as he stood gazing. And then the bell once more broke out into impatient clamor.

He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile.

"You had better go for the police," said he: "I have killed your master."

NOTES

[1] Written in 1884. This story is used by permission of and special arrangement with the Charles Scribner's Sons Company, Publishers.

[2] 237:1 windfalls. Unexpected gains.

[3] 237:3 dividend. His knowledge a business asset that draws interest.

[4] 241:22 skewer-like. Like a wooden pin now used to fasten meat.

[5] 242:11 leaguer. Place besieged with shadows.

[6] 242:27 Time was that when the brains were out. See Macbeth, Act III, sc. 4, line 78.

[7] 243:16 iteration. Repetition.

[8] 246:25 railleries. Merry jesting or ridicule.

[9] 247:7 garishly. A blinding, gaudy effect.

[10] 247:7 Brownrigg. A notorious murderess living in England in the middle of the eighteenth century. She was hanged and her skeleton is still preserved.

[11] 247:8 Mannings. Marie Manning and her husband murdered a former suitor. They were given, a death sentence.

[12] 247:9 Thurtell. A gambler who quarrelled with Weare and killed him after he had professed peace. He designed his own gallows.

[13] 247:25 horologist. One who makes timepieces.

[14] 249:27 scission. A cleaving or a dividing.

[15] 250:25 Sheraton. Next to Chippendale the greatest furniture designer and cabinet-maker.

[16] 250:25 marquetry. An inlay of some thin material in the surface of a piece of furniture or other object.

[17] 251:23 Jacobean. Pertaining to the time of James I of England.

[18] 253:12 travesty. A grotesque imitation.

[19] 254:3 sophistry. Methods of the Greek sophists.

[20] 254:29 efficacy. Effective energy.

[21] 255:5 sow tares, etc. See Matthew XII, 24-30.

[22] 255:29 category. A class, condition, or predicament.

[23] 256:14 hurtling. Rushing headlong or confusedly.

[24] 280:10 dislimned. Erased or effaced.

COLLATERAL READINGS

_Treasure Island_, R.L. Stevenson.

_Kidnapped_, R.L. Stevenson.

_Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, R.L. Stevenson.

_Prince Otto_, R.L. Stevenson.

_Across the Plains_, R.L. Stevenson.

_Travels with a Donkey_, R.L. Stevenson.

_An Inland Voyage_, R.L. Stevenson.

_Essays on Burns and Thoreau_, R.L. Stevenson.

_Virginibus Puerisque_, R.L. Stevenson.

_The Child's Garden of Verses_, R.L. Stevenson.

_The Masque of the Red Death_, Edgar Allan Poe.

_The Pit and the Pendulum_, Edgar Allan Poe.

_A Coward_, Guy de Maupassant.

_The Substitute_, François Coppée.

_The Revolt of Mother_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.

_Flute and Violin_, James Lane Alien.

_A Lear of the Steppes_, Ivan Turgeneff.

_Rappacini's Daughter_, Nathaniel Hawthorne.