of the town. Clarke seconded the request. We walked forth; the rest--why
need I repeat? Houseman lied in the court; my hand struck--but not
thedeath-blow: yet, from that hour, I have never given that right hand in
pledge of love or friendship--the curse of memory has clung to it.

"We shared our booty; mine I buried, for the present. Houseman had
dealings with a gipsy hag, and through her aid removed his share, at
once, to London. And now, mark what poor strugglers we are in the eternal
web of destiny! Three days after that deed, a relation who neglected me
in life, died, and left me wealth!--wealth at least to me!--Wealth,
greater than that for which I had . . .! The news fell on me as a
thunderbolt. Had I waited but three little days! Great God! when they
told me,--I thought I heard the devils laugh out at the fool who had
boasted wisdom! Tell me not now of our free will--we are but the things
of a neverswerving, an everlasting Necessity!--pre-ordered to our doom--
bound to a wheel that whirls us on till it touches the point at which we
are crushed! Had I waited but three days, three little days!--Had but a
dream been sent me, had but my heart cried within me,--'Thou hast
suffered long, tarry yet!' [Note: Aram has hitherto been suffered to tell
his own tale without comment or interruption. The chain of reasonings,
the metaphysical labyrinth of defence and motive, which he wrought around
his act, it was, in justice to him, necessary to give at length, in order
to throw a clearer light on his character--and lighten, perhaps, in some
measure the heinousness of his crime. No moral can be more impressive
than that which teaches how man can entangle himself in his own sophisms-
-that moral is better, viewed aright, than volumes of homilies. But here
I must pause for one moment, to bid the reader mark, that that event
which confirmed Aram in the bewildering doctrines of his fatalism, ought
rather to inculcate the Divine virtue--the foundation of all virtues,
Heathen or Christian--that which Epictetus made clear, and Christ sacred