“I die by my own hands,” said this document, “that I may lose the sense of pain, bodily and mental. I die at peace with the world. It has never wronged me. I am the source of my own sorrows, as I am the cause of my own death. I will not say that I die sane. I am doubtful on that head. I am sure that I have been the victim of a sort of madness for a very long time. This has led me to do wrong, and to meditate wrong—has made me guilty of many things, which, in my better moments of mind and body, I should have shrunk from in horror. I write this that nobody may be suspected of sharing in a deed the blame of which must rest on my head only.”
Then followed certain apologies to the landlord for having made his house the scene of an event so shocking. The same paper also conveyed certain presents of personal stuff to the same person, with thanks for his courtesy and attention. An adequate sum of money, paying his bill, and the expenses of his funeral, was left in his purse, upon the paper.
Kingsley assumed the final direction of these affairs; and having seen everything in a fair way for the funeral, which was appointed to take place the next morning, he hurried me away to his lodging-house.
CHAPTER L. — CONFESSION OF EDGERTON.
When within his chamber, he carefully fastened the door and placed a packet in my hands.
“This is addressed to you,” he said. “I found it on the table with other papers, and seeing the address, and fearing that if the jury laid eyes on it, they might insist on knowing its contents, I thrust it into my pocket and said nothing about it there. Read it at your leisure, while I smoke a cigar below.”
He left me, and I opened the seal with a sense of misgiving and apprehension for which I could not easily account. The outer packet was addressed to myself. But the envelope contained several other papers, one of which was addressed to his father; another—a small billet, unsealed—bore the name of my wife upon it.
“That,” I inly (sic) muttered, “she shall never read!”