now evidently brought one degree nearer to him.  He kept his gaze intently and unceasingly turned to the window of the dungeon.  His muttered replies were incoherent, or unintelligible, and his sunk and weakened eye strained painfully on the grated window, as if he momentarily expected to see the first streak of the dawn of that morning, which to him was to be night.  His nervous agitation gradually became horrible, and his motions stronger.  He seemed not to have resolution enough to rise from his seat and go to the window, and yet to have an over-powering wish or impulse to do so.  The lowest sound startled him—­but with this terrible irritation, his muscular power, before debilitated, seemed to revive, and his action, which was drooping and languid, became quick and angular.  I began to be seized with an undefined sense of fear and alarm.  In vain I combated it; it grew upon me; and I had almost risen from my seat to try to make myself heard, and obtain, if possible, assistance.  The loneliness of the gaol, however, rendered this, even, if attempted, almost desperate—­the sense of duty, the dread of ridicule, came across me, and chained me to my seat by the miserable criminal, whose state was becoming every minute more dreadful and extraordinary.

* * * * *

Exhausted by the wearing excitement and anxiety of my situation, I had for a moment sunk into that confused absence of mind with which those who have been in similar circumstances cannot be unacquainted, when my miserable companion, with a convulsive shudder, grasped my arm suddenly.  I was for a few seconds unaware of the cause of this emotion and movement, when a low, indistinct sound caught my ear.  It was the rumbling of a cart, mingled with two or three suppressed voices; and the cart appeared to be leaving the gate of the dismal building in which we were.  It rolled slowly and heavily as if cumbrously laden, under the paved gateway; and after a few minutes, all was silent.  The agonized wretch understood its import better than I did.  A gust of the wildest despair came suddenly over him.  He clutched with his hands whatever met his grasp.  His knees worked.  His frame became agitated with one continued movement, swaying backwards and forwards, almost to falling;—­and his inarticulate complaints became terrific.  I attempted to steady him by an exertion of strength—­I spoke kindly to him, but he writhed in my grasp like an adder, and as an adder was deaf; grief and fear had horrible possession.  Myself, almost in a state of desperation—­for the sight was pitiful.  I at last endeavoured to awe him into a momentary quiescence, and strongly bade him at last to die like a man; but the word “Death” had to him only the effect it may be supposed to have upon a mere animal nature and understanding—­how could it have any other?  He tried to bear it, and could not, and uttering a stifled noise, between a yell and a moan, he grasped his own neck; his face assumed a dark red colour, and he fell into a state of stifled convulsion.