hands of the mighty murderer. He had but to say--my testimonials are dated
from No. 29 Ratcliffe Highway, and the poor vanquished imagination sank
powerless before the fascinating rattlesnake eye of the murderer. There is
not a doubt that the motive of the murderer for standing on the inner side
of Marr's front-door, whilst Mary stood on the outside, was--a hope that,
if he quietly opened the door, whisperingly counterfeiting Marr's voice,
and saying, What made you stay so long? possibly she might have been
inveigled. He was wrong; the time was past for that; Mary was now
maniacally awake; she began now to ring the bell and to ply the knocker
with unintermitting violence. And the natural consequence was, that the
next door neighbor, who had recently gone to bed and instantly fallen
asleep, was roused; and by the incessant violence of the ringing and the
knocking, which now obeyed a delirious and uncontrollable impulse in Mary,
he became sensible that some very dreadful event must be at the root of so
clamorous an uproar. To rise, to throw up the sash, to demand angrily the
cause of this unseasonable tumult, was the work of a moment. The poor girl
remained sufficiently mistress of herself rapidly to explain the
circumstance of her own absence for an hour; her belief that Mr. and Mrs.
Marr's family had all been murdered in the interval; and that at this very
moment the murderer was in the house.

The person to whom she addressed this statement was a pawnbroker; and a
thoroughly brave man he must have been; for it was a perilous undertaking,
merely as a trial of physical strength, singly to face a mysterious
assassin, who had apparently signalized his prowess by a triumph so
comprehensive. But, again, for the imagination it required an effort of
self-conquest to rush headlong into the presence of one invested with a
cloud of mystery, whose nation, age, motives, were all alike unknown.
Rarely on any field of battle has a soldier been called upon to face so
complex a danger. For if the entire family of his neighbor Marr had been