ANOTHER WAY


If I must make a guess, I conjecture that Jasper had one of his
"filmy" seizures, was "in a frightful sort of dream," and bungled
the murder: made an incomplete job of it. Half-strangled men and
women have often recovered. In Jasper's opium vision and
reminiscence there was no resistance, all was very soon over.
Jasper might even bungle the locking of the door of the vault. He
was apt to have a seizure after opium, in moments of excitement,
and HE HAD BEEN AT THE OPIUM DEN THROUGH THE NIGHT OF DECEMBER 23,
for the hag tracked him from her house in town to Cloisterham on
December 24, the day of the crime. Grant that his accustomed fit
came upon him during the excitement of the murder, as it does come
after "a nicht wi' opium," in chapter ii., when Edwin excites him
by contemptuous talk of the girl whom Jasper loves so furiously--
and then anything may happen!

Jasper murders Edwin inefficiently; he has a fit; while he is
unconscious the quicklime revives Edwin, by burning his hand, say,
and, during Jasper's swoon, Edwin, like another famous prisoner,
"has a happy thought, he opens the door, and walks out."

Being drugged, he is in a dreamy state; knows not clearly what has
occurred, or who attacked him. Jasper revives, "look on't again he
dare not,"--on the body of his victim--and HE walks out and goes
home, where his red lamp has burned all the time--"thinking it all
wery capital."