Hilyard, I had managed, should hold the glass, and as I assumed to
examine the flask, he carried the wine to Amy. Not that I wished, in
case of future inquiries, to implicate him, but I felt a melodramatic
desire that he should give his poison to Amy with his own hand: the wish
to seethe the kid in its mother's milk.

I watched her slowly drain the glass, without one pang that I had given
her death to drink. I experienced an atrocious satisfaction in feeling
that no chance whim had deterred her from consuming it all. I took the
flask to my room again, saying that I had forgotten a letter from my
mother, which I wished Amy to read, as it contained a tender message for
her.

As I stood alone in my room a fear overcame me that I had been a
credulous fool. Suppose the whole story of the drug were a fabrication,
what a farce were this! Who ever heard of a poison with so strange an
effect? True, but who had ever heard of chloroform a century ago? Let it
go that he was a discoverer, and I the first to profit by it. I would
take this ground, at least until it was disproved; time enough then to
devise other means.

Amy's room was next to mine; on the other side slept--and soundly, too,
I would wager--her aunt. Indeed, our rooms connected by a door, always
locked and without a key, of course. By a sudden impulse I took out my
bunch of keys. Fortune favored me; an old key, that of my room at
College, not only fitted perfectly, but opened it as softly as one
could wish, and the door itself never creaked. Locking it again, I went
into Amy's room through the hall. A low light was burning. I looked
about anxiously. Would she find the necessary means at hand without
arousing the household? It must be. Suicide must be quite apparent, and