“What do you mean?” interrupted his wife.
“Still it cried ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house; ‘Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more.’”
“Who was it that thus cried?” said Lady Macbeth impatiently. “Why, worthy Thane, you weaken your strength by thinking so foolishly of things. Go, get some water, and wash this witness from your hands. Why did you bring these daggers from the place? They must lie there.—And smear the sleepy grooms with blood.”
“I’ll go no more,” said Macbeth. “I am afraid to think what I have done; look on it again I dare not.”
“Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers!” cried Lady Macbeth contemptuously. “The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures; ’tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.” And, seizing the daggers from her husband’s nerveless grasp, she carried them back into King Duncan’s room, and placed them in the hands of the drowsy attendants, to make it appear as if it were they who had murdered the King.
Before Lady Macbeth could rejoin her husband, there came a knocking at the outer gate, and she hurried him away to put on night apparel, in order to divert suspicion from themselves if they were summoned.
The new-comer was a Scotch lord called Macduff, whom the King had appointed to call on him early in the morning. He was admitted into Duncan’s room, when, of course, the crime was at once discovered. All was now horror and confusion. Macbeth feigned as much dismay as everyone else showed. The whole castle was aroused; the alarum bell pealed out. Macduff shouted for Banquo, and for the two young Princes, Malcolm and Donalbain. Lady Macbeth came running in, as if just disturbed from sleep.
Fearing what the two grooms might say when they recovered from their drugged sleep, Macbeth took the opportunity in the uproar to slay them both, pretending that he was carried away by the fury of the moment at seeing the evidence of their villainy, the daggers in their hands.
But the suspicions of the two young Princes were aroused; they dreaded that the treachery begun was not yet ended, and they felt no safety in their present abode. So when Macbeth summoned a meeting in the hall of the castle to decide what was to be the future course of action, they secretly stole away, for better security resolving to separate, Malcolm, the elder son, going to England, and Donalbain, the younger, to Ireland.