least knowing why) as if the one chance of getting rid of this curious
incubus, was to put the persistent image of the man on paper. It was done
mechanically, and yet done so well, that I was encouraged to add to the
picture. I put in next the poor beaten horse (another good likeness!);
and then I introduced a life-like portrait of myself, giving the man the
sound thrashing that he had deserved. Strange to say, this representation
of what I ought to have done, relieved my mind as if I had actually done
it. I looked at the pre-eminent figure of myself, and felt good, and
turned to my Trials, and read them over again, and liked them better than
ever.



"Thursday.--The bookseller has found a second-hand copy of the French
Trials, and has sent them to me (as he expresses it) 'on approval'.

"I more than approve--I admire; and I more than admire--I imitate. These
criminal stories are told with a dramatic power, which has impelled me to
try if I can rival the clever French narrative. I found a promising
subject by putting myself in my grandfather's place, and tracing the
means by which it had occurred to me that he might have escaped the
discovery of his crime.

"I cannot remember having read any novel with a tenth part of the
interest that absorbed me, in constructing my imaginary train of
circumstances. So completely did the reality of the narrative impress
itself on my mind, that I felt as if the murder that I was relating had
been a crime committed by myself. It was my own ingenuity that hid the
dead body, and removed the traces of blood--and my own self-control that
presented me as an innocent person, when the victim was missing, and I