CHAPTER XXXIV.
"Murder will out." The city clocks had just tolled out the hour of twelve, the last omnibus had rumbled by, and the silence without was broken only at rare intervals when some belated citizen passed by with hurried footsteps towards his home.

All was still in the house of Mr.Stevens--so quiet, that the ticking of the large clock in the hall could be distinctly heard at the top of the stairway, breaking the solemn stillness of the night with its monotonous "click, click--click, click!" In a richly furnished chamber overlooking the street a dim light was burning; so dimly, in fact, that the emaciated form of Mr.Stevens was scarcely discernible amidst the pillows and covering of the bed on which he was lying.

Above him a brass head of curious workmanship held in its clenched teeth the canopy that overshadowed the bed; and as the light occasionally flickered and brightened, the curiously carved face seemed to light up with a sort of sardonic grin; and the grating of the curtain-rings, as the sick man tossed from side to side in his bed, would have suggested the idea that the odd supporter of the canopy was gnashing his brazen teeth at him.
On the wall, immediately opposite the light, hung a portrait of Mrs.
Stevens; not the sharp, hard face we once introduced to the reader, but a smoother, softer countenance--yet a worn and melancholy one in its expression.

It looked as if the waves of grief had beaten upon it for a long succession of years, until they had tempered down its harsher peculiarities, giving a subdued appearance to the whole countenance.
"There is twelve o'clock--give me my drops again, Lizzie," he remarked, faintly.

At the sound of his voice Lizzie emerged from behind the curtains, and essayed to pour into a glass the proper quantity of medicine.