’Put up your watch, I don’t want it.  You shan’t come to any harm.  Go, now; I must tell Adler his fortune.  Presently I will tell you how to escape the assassin; meantime I shall have to examine your thumbmark again.  Say nothing to Adler about this thing—­say nothing to anybody.’

He went away filled with fright and gratitude, poor devil.  I told Adler a long fortune—­purposely so long that I could not finish it; promised to come to him on guard, that night, and tell him the really important part of it—­the tragical part of it, I said—­so must be out of reach of eavesdroppers.  They always kept a picket-watch outside the town—­mere discipline and ceremony—­no occasion for it, no enemy around.

Toward midnight I set out, equipped with the countersign, and picked my way toward the lonely region where Adler was to keep his watch.  It was so dark that I stumbled right on a dim figure almost before I could get out a protecting word.  The sentinel hailed and I answered, both at the same moment.  I added, ‘It’s only me—­the fortune-teller.’  Then I slipped to the poor devil’s side, and without a word I drove my dirk into his heart!  Ya Wohl, laughed I, it was the tragedy part of his fortune, indeed!  As he fell from his horse, he clutched at me, and my blue goggles remained in his hand; and away plunged the beast dragging him, with his foot in the stirrup.

I fled through the woods, and made good my escape, leaving the accusing goggles behind me in that dead man’s hand.

This was fifteen or sixteen years ago.  Since then I have wandered aimlessly about the earth, sometimes at work, sometimes idle; sometimes with money, sometimes with none; but always tired of life, and wishing it was done, for my mission here was finished, with the act of that night; and the only pleasure, solace, satisfaction I had, in all those tedious years, was in the daily reflection, ‘I have killed him!’

Four years ago, my health began to fail.  I had wandered into Munich, in my purposeless way.  Being out of money, I sought work, and got it; did my duty faithfully about a year, and was then given the berth of night watchman yonder in that dead-house which you visited lately.  The place suited my mood.  I liked it.  I liked being with the dead—­liked being alone with them.  I used to wander among those rigid corpses, and peer into their austere faces, by the hour.  The later the time, the more impressive it was; I preferred the late time.  Sometimes I turned the lights low:  this gave perspective, you see; and the imagination could play; always, the dim receding ranks of the dead inspired one with weird and fascinating fancies.  Two years ago—­I had been there a year then—­I was sitting all alone in the watch-room, one gusty winter’s night, chilled, numb, comfortless; drowsing gradually into unconsciousness; the sobbing of the wind and the slamming of distant shutters falling fainter and fainter upon my dulling ear each moment, when sharp and suddenly that dead-bell rang out a blood-curdling alarum over my head!  The shock of it nearly paralyzed me; for it was the first time I had ever heard it.