yet might it not have been the tenth, twelfth, or fourteenth stair? Never,
perhaps, in this world did any man feel his own responsibility so cruelly
loaded and strained, as at this moment did the poor journeyman on behalf
of the slumbering child. Lose but two seconds, through awkwardness or
through the self-counteractions of panic, and for _her_ the total
difference arose between life and death. Still there is a hope: and
nothing can so frightfully expound the hellish nature of him whose baleful
shadow, to speak astrologically, at this moment darkens the house of life,
than the simple expression of the ground on which this hope rested. The
journeyman felt sure that the murderer would not be satisfied to kill the
poor child whilst unconscious. This would be to defeat his whole purpose
in murdering her at all. To an epicure in murder such as Williams, it
would be taking away the very sting of the enjoyment, if the poor child
should be suffered to drink off the bitter cup of death without fully
apprehending the misery of the situation. But this luckily would require
time: the double confusion of mind, first, from being roused up at so
unusual an hour, and, secondly, from the horror of the occasion when
explained to her, would at first produce fainting, or some mode of
insensibility or distraction, such as must occupy a considerable time. The
logic of the case, in short, all rested upon the _ultra_ fiendishness
of Williams. Were he likely to be content with the mere fact of the
child's death, apart from the process and leisurely expansion of its
mental agony--in that case there would be no hope. But, because our
present murderer is fastidiously finical in his exactions--a sort of
martinet in the scenical grouping and draping of the circumstances in his
murders--therefore it is that hope becomes reasonable, since all such
refinements of preparation demand time. Murders of mere necessity Williams
was obliged to hurry; but, in a murder of pure voluptuousness, entirely
disinterested, where no hostile witness was to be removed, no extra booty
to be gained, and no revenge to be gratified, it is clear that to hurry