her own pallet, whence her loud breathing almost immediately told that
she was asleep. Still with bated breath the mulatto waited, stooping
with her ear at the keyhole till the regular respirations of the mother
and the softened panting of the little invalid assured her that all
was safe. Then, at last, turning the handle of the latch silently and
gradually, she glided into the room and stood by the side of her victim.

The whole range of imaginative literature cannot furnish an incident
of more absorbing interest; nor can the whole history of the theatre
exhibit a situation of more tremendous scenical power than was presented
at this moment in that chamber of doom. The four unconscious sleepers
with the murderess in the midst of them, bending with hard, glittering
eyes over her prey, while around them all the huge shadows cast by the
dim, untrimmed light, like uncouth monsters, rose, flitted, and fell, as
if in a goblin-dance of joy over the scene of approaching guilt. Sleep,
solemn at any time, becomes almost awful when we gaze upon it amid the
stillness of night, so mysterious is it, and so near akin to the deeper
mystery of death,--so peaceful, with a peace so much like that of the
grave: men could scarcely comprehend the idea of the one, if they were
not acquainted with the reality of the other. There lay the mother, with
her arms around her sleeping child, whose painful breathing showed that
it suffered even while it slept. Such a spectacle might have moved the
hardest heart to pity; but it possessed no such power over that of the
desperate slave, whose vindictive purpose never wavered for an instant.
Passing round the bed, she stooped and softly encircled the emaciated
little neck with her fingers. One quick, strong gripe,--the poor, weak
hands were thrown up, a soft gasp and a slight spasm, and it was done.
The frail young life, which had known little except suffering, and which
disease would probably have extinguished in a few hours or days, was
thus at once and almost painlessly cut short by the hand of violence.