of purpose, and accused him of fickleness and cowardice; and declared that she had given suck, and knew how tender it was to love the babe that milked her, but she would, while it was smiling in her face, have plucked it from her breast, and dashed its brains out, if she had so sworn to do it, as he had sworn to perform that murder.  Then she added, how practicable it was to lay the guilt of the deed upon the drunken sleepy grooms.  And with the valour of her tongue she so chastised his sluggish resolutions, that he once more summoned up courage to the bloody business.

So, taking the dagger in his hand, he softly stole in the dark to the room where Duncan lay; and as he went, he thought he saw another dagger in the air, with the handle towards him, and on the blade and at the point of it drops of blood:  but when he tried to grasp at it, it was nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot and oppressed brain and the business he had in hand.

Getting rid of this fear, he entered the king’s room, whom he dispatched with one stroke of his dagger.  Just as he had done the murder, one of the grooms, who slept in the chamber, laughed in his sleep, and the other cried “Murder,” which woke them both:  but they said a short prayer; one of them said, “God bless us!” and the other answered “Amen;” and addressed themselves to sleep again.  Macbeth, who stood listening to them, tried to say “Amen,” when the fellow said “God bless us!” but, though he had most need of a blessing, the word stuck in his throat, and he could not pronounce it.

Again he thought he heard a voice which cried, “Sleep no more:  Macbeth doth murder sleep, the innocent sleep, that nourishes life.”  Still it cried, “Sleep no more,” to all the house.  “Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more.”

With such horrible imaginations, Macbeth returned to his listening wife, who began to think he had failed of his purpose, and that the deed was somehow frustrated.  He came in so distracted a state, that she reproached him with his want of firmness, and sent him to wash his hands of the blood which stained them, while she took his dagger, with purpose to stain the cheeks of the grooms with blood, to make it seem their guilt.

Morning came, and with it the discovery of the murder, which could not be concealed; and though Macbeth and his lady made great show of grief, and the proofs against the grooms (the dagger being produced against them and their faces smeared with blood) were sufficiently strong, yet the entire suspicion fell upon Macbeth, whose inducements to such a deed were so much more forcible than such poor silly grooms could be supposed to have; and Duncan’s two sons fled.  Malcolm, the eldest, sought for refuge in the English court; and the youngest, Donalbain, made his escape to Ireland.

The king’s sons, who should have succeeded him, having thus vacated the throne, Macbeth as next heir was crowned king, and thus the prediction of the weird sisters was literally accomplished.