PELHAM; OR, ADVENTURES OF A GENTLEMAN. CHAPTER I. Marry, he was dead And the right valiant Banquo walked too late, Whom, you may say, if it please you, Fleance killed, Macbeth. Ir is a fearful thing, even to the hardiest nerves, to find ourselves suddenly alone with the dead. How much more so, if we have, but a breathing interval before, moved and conversed with the warm and living likeness of the motionless clay before us! VOL. III. And this was the man from whom I had parted in coldness-almost in anger-at a word-a breath! I took up the heavy hand-it fell from my grasp, and as it did so, I thought a change passed over the livid countenance. I was deceived; it was but a light cloud flitting over the moon ;-it rolled away, and the placid and guiltless light shone over that scene of dread and blood, making more wild and chilling the eternal contrast of earth and heaven-man and his Maker-passion and immutability-dust and immortality. But that was not a moment for reflection-a thousand thoughts hurried upon me, and departed as swift and confusedly as they came. My mind seemed a jarring and benighted chaos of the faculties which were its elements; and I had stood several minutes over the corpse before, by a vigorous effort, I shook off the stupor that possessed me, and began to think of the course that it now behoved me to pursue. The house I had noted in the morning was, I knew, within a few minutes' walk of the spot; but it belonged to Dawson, upon whom the first weight of my suspicions rested. I called to mind the dis reputable character of that man, and the still more daring and hardened one of his companion Thornton. I remembered the reluctance of the deceased to accompany them, and the well-grounded reason he assigned; and my suspicions amounting to certainty, I resolved rather to proceed to Chester Park, and there give the alarm, than to run the unnecessary risk of interrupting the murderers in the very lair of their retreat. And yet, thought I, as I turned slowly away, how, if they were the villains, is the appearance and flight of the disguised horseman to be accounted for? Then flashed upon my recollection all that Tyrrell had said of the dogged pursuit of that mysterious person, and the circumstance of his having passed me upon the road so immediately after Tyrrell had quitted me. These reflections (associated with a name that I did not dare breathe even to myself, although I could not suppress a suspicion which accounted at once for the pursuit, and even for the deed,) made me waver in, and almost renounce my former condemnation of Thornton and his friend and by the time I reached the white gate and dwarfish avenue which led to Dawson's house, I resolved, at all events, to halt at the solitary mansion, and mark the effect my information would cause. A momentary fear for my own safety came across me, but was as instantly dismissed ;-for even supposing the friends were guilty, still it would be no object to them to extend their remorseless villany to me; and I knew that I could sufficiently command my own thoughts to prevent any suspicion I might form, from mounting to my countenance, or discovering itself in my manner. There was a light in the upper story; it burned still and motionless. How holy seemed the tranquillity of life, to the forced and fearful silence of the death scene I had just witnessed! I rung twice at the door-no one came to answer my summons, but the light in the upper window moved hurriedly to and fro. "They are coming," said I to myself. No such thing-the casement above was opened-I looked up, and discovered, to my infinite comfort and delight, a blunderbuss protruded eight inches out of |