which entered into its formation.  Seldom have more nicely calculated combinations entered into the plots of criminals, and never was a plot depending on so many chances more completely successful.  Yet the pivot of the whole, as often in more extensive schemes of homicide, is to be found in the reckless daring and utter disregard of personal safety manifested throughout.  For this alone she seems to have made no calculations and taken no precautions; her whole mind being bent apparently on the solution of one single difficulty,—­how to approach her enemy undetected.

As to the details of this affair, let us mention one or two facts, and then the conduct of the murderess will itself explain them.  We have already stated that the only child of Captain and Mrs. Wilde, an infant about eighteen months old, was at this time dangerously ill.  For a fortnight it had been the custom of the parents to sit up with it on alternate nights, this night it being the father’s regular turn to perform that duty; but his trip of twenty-five or thirty miles had fatigued him so much that it was judged best for his wife to relieve him,—­his slumbers being usually so profound as to be almost lethargic, so that, when once fairly asleep, the loudest noises even in the same room would fail to arouse him, and it being feared, therefore, that the little patient might suffer, if left to his care in his present state of weariness.  In the same room slept a young negro girl, whose duty it was to carry the child into the open air when occasion required,—­an office which Fanny herself had more than once performed.  The reader will note how ingeniously every one of these circumstances was woven into the girl’s scheme of death, and how each was made subservient to the end in view.

* * * * *

At ten o’clock on the night of the 18th of July, 17—­, everything had become quiet about that lonely farm-house, so completely isolated in the midst of its wide plantation that the barking of the dogs at the nearest dwellings was barely heard in the profound stillness.  A dim light, as if from a deeply shaded candle, shone from one of the casements to the right of the hall-door, showing where the parents watched by the bed of their suffering infant.  Along the high-road, which, a few rods in front, stretched white and silent in the moonlight between its long lines of worm-fences, a solitary traveller on horseback was journeying at this hour.  This gentleman afterward remembered being more than usually impressed by the air of peace and repose that reigned about the place, as he rode under the tall locust-trees which skirted the yard and cast their dark shadows over into the highway.  But he did not see a female form flitting furtively from the negro-quarters in the rear, toward the house; and a shade of suspicion might have crossed his mind, had he glanced back a moment later and beheld that form approach the lighted window with stealthy, cautious steps, and peer long and intently through the partially drawn curtains upon the scene within, then, stooping low, glide along the moonlit wall and disappear beneath the short flight of wooden steps that led up to the front-door.