depending on the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chess-board, should break the mould of their succession?  The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when the winter changed the time of its appearance.  The like might befall Markheim:  the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might yield under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch.  Ay, and there were soberer accidents that might destroy him; if, for instance, the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim, or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him from all sides.  These things he feared; and, in a sense, these things might be called the hands of God reached forth against sin.  But about God himself he was at ease; his act was doubtless exceptional, but so were his excuses, which God knew; it was there, and not among men, that he felt sure of justice.

When he had got safe into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him, he was aware of a respite from alarms.  The room was quite dismantled, uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing-cases and incongruous furniture; several great pier-glasses, in which he beheld himself at various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed and unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry, and a great old bed, with tapestry hangings.  The windows opened to the floor; but by great good fortune the lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this concealed him from the neighbours.  Here, then, Markheim drew in a packing-case before the cabinet, and began to search among the keys.  It was a long business, for there were many; and it was irksome, besides; for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and time was on the wing.  But the closeness of the occupation sobered him.  With the tail of his eye he saw the door—­even glanced at it from time to time directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good estate of his defences.  But in truth he was at peace.  The rain falling in the street sounded natural and pleasant.  Presently, on the other side, the notes of a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn, and the voices of many children took up the air and words.  How stately, how comfortable was the melody!  How fresh the youthful voices!  Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as he sorted out the keys; and his mind was thronged with answerable ideas and images:  church-going children, and the pealing of the high organ; children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to recall) and the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel.