The deed was executed with a degree of self-possession and steadiness equal to the wickedness with which it was planned.  The circumstances now clearly in evidence spread out the whole scene before us.  Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim, and on all beneath his roof.  A healthful old man, to whom sleep was sweet, the first sound slumbers of the night held him in their soft but strong embrace.  The assassin enters, through the window already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment.  With noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half lighted by the moon; he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber.  Of this, he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it turns on its hinges without noise; and he enters, and beholds his victim before him.  The room is uncommonly open to the admission of light.  The face of the innocent sleeper is turned from the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting on the gray locks of his aged temple, show him where to strike.  The fatal blow is given! and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death!  It is the assassin’s purpose to make sure work; and he plies the dagger, though it is obvious that life has been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon.  He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his aim at the heart, and replaces it again over the wounds of the poniard!  To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse!  He feels for it, and ascertains that it beats no longer!  It is accomplished.  The deed is done.  He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes.  He has done the murder.  No eye has seen him, no ear has heard him.  The secret is his own, and it is safe!

Ah!  Gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake.  Such a secret can be safe nowhere.  The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe.  Not to speak of that eye which pierces through all disguises, and beholds every thing as in the splendor of noon, such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by men.  True it is, generally speaking, that “murder will out.”  True it is, that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of Heaven by shedding man’s blood seldom succeed in avoiding discovery.  Especially, in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or later.  A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, every circumstance, connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery.  Meantime the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret.  It is false to itself; or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself.  It labors under its guilty