From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim’s eyes returned to the body of his victim, where it lay, both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life.  In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust.  Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing.  And yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent voices.  There it must lie; there was none to work the cunning hinges or direct the miracle of locomotion; there it must lie till it was found.  Found! ay, and then?  Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry that would ring over England, and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit.  Ay, dead or not, this was still the enemy.  “Time was that when the brains were out,” he thought; and the first word struck into his mind.  Time, now that the deed was accomplished—­time, which had closed for the victim, had become instant and momentous for the slayer.

The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another, with every variety of pace and voice—­one deep as the bell from a cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz,—­the clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.

The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered him.  He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle, beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance reflections.  In many rich mirrors, some of home design, some from Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of his own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet.  And still, as he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him with a sickening iteration, of the thousand faults of his design.  He should have chosen a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he should not have used a knife; he should have been more cautious, and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should have done all things otherwise.  Poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past.  Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the black coffin.