I shall never forget the horror of that young man's dissolution. He lay, at times, the picture of terror, gazing upon the walls, along which, in his imagination, crept myriads of loathsome reptiles, with now some frightful monster, and now a fire-lipped demon, stealing out of the shadows and preparing to dart upon him as their prey. Now he would whine and weep, as if asking forgiveness for some act of wrong done to the being man is most constant to wrong—the loving, the feeble, the confiding; and anon, seized by a tempest of passion, the cause of which could only be imagined, he would start up, fight, foam at the mouth, and fall back in convulsions. Once he sat up in bed, and, looking like a corpse, began to sing a bacchanalian song; on another occasion, after lying for many minutes in apparent stupefaction, he leaped out of bed before he could be prevented, and, uttering a yell that was heard in the street, endeavoured to throw himself from the window.
But the last raving act of all was the most horrid. He rose upon his knees with a strength that could not be resisted, caught up his pillow, thrust it down upon the bed with both hands, and there held it, with a grim countenance and a chuckling laugh. None understood the act but myself: no other could read the devilish thoughts then at work in his bosom. It was the scene enacted in the chamber of his parent—he was repeating the deed of murder—he was exulting, in imagination, over a successful parricide.
In this thought he expired; for while still pressing upon the pillow with a giant's strength, he suddenly fell on his face, and when turned over was a corpse. He gave but a single gasp, and was no more.
The horror of the spectacle drove me from the chamber, and I ran to my own to fall down and die; when the blessed thought entered my mind, that the wo on my spirit, the anguish, the distraction, were but a dream—that my very existence, as the miser and broken-hearted father, was a phantasm rather than a reality, since it was a borrowed existence—and that it was in my power to exchange it, as I had done other modes of being, for a better. I was Sheppard Lee, not Abram Skinner; and this was but a voluntary episode in my existence, which I was at liberty to terminate.
The thought was rapture. I resolved to sally out and fasten upon the first body I could find, being certain I could be in none so miserable as I had been in that I now inhabited. Nay, the idea was so agreeable, the execution of it seemed to promise such certain release from a load of wretchedness, that I resolved to attempt it without even waiting for morning.
I seized upon my hat and cloak, and, for fear I might stumble into some poor man's body, as I had done in the case of Dawkins's, I opened my strong-box, and clapped into my pockets all the money it contained, designing to take precautionary measures to transfer it along with my spirit to the new tenement. I seized upon the loaned money that had been repaid that day, together with a small sum that had been in the box before; and, had there been a million in the coffer, I should have nabbed it all, without much question of the right I actually possessed in it. The whole sum was small, not exceeding four hundred dollars, all being in bank-bills. I should have been glad of more, but was too eager to exchange my vile casing, with its miseries, for a better, to think of waiting till bank-hours next day.
Taking possession, therefore, of this sum, and a dozen silver spoons that had been left in pledge a few days before, I hastened to put my plan into execution. I slipped down stairs, let myself out of the door as softly as if I had been an intruder, and set out, in a night of February, to search for a new body.