This is a most extraordinary case.  In some respects it has hardly a precedent anywhere; certainly none in our New England history.  This bloody drama exhibited no suddenly excited, ungovernable rage.  The actors in it were not surprised by any lionlike temptation springing upon their virtue, and overcoming it before resistance could begin.  Nor did they do the deed to glut savage vengeance, or satiate long-settled and deadly hate.  It was a cool, calculating, money-making murder.  It was all “hire and salary, not revenge.”  It was the weighing of money against life; the counting out of so many pieces of silver against so many ounces of blood.

An aged man, without an enemy in the world, in his own house, and in his own bed, is made the victim of a butcherly murder for mere pay.  Truly, here is a new lesson for painters and poets.  Whoever shall hereafter draw the portrait of murder, if he will show it as it has been exhibited in an example, where such example was last to have been looked for, in the very bosom of our New England society, let him not give it the grim visage of Moloch, the brow knitted by revenge, the face black with settled hate, and the bloodshot eye emitting livid fires of malice.  Let him draw, rather, a decorous, smooth-faced, bloodless demon; a picture in repose, rather than in action; not so much an example of human nature in its depravity, and in its paroxysms of crime, as an infernal nature, a fiend in the ordinary display and development of his character.

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 was uncommonly open to the admission of light.  The face of the innocent sleeper was turned from the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting on the gray locks of his aged temple, showed 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 yet plies the dagger, though it was obvious that life had 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!