'Help,' he cried, and I came
near crying it, too! All at once my hand fell upon my pocket, I felt
the knife, I drew it out, opened it, and stabbed him as he was
strangling me!
"That was the whole! Do you call it a _murder_? I rose up, as _he_ fell
back. His breast was all bloody; his eyes turned round; he gasped
something, and fell back dead."
The speaker paused and wiped his brow with his huge, muscular hand. His
face was a strange spectacle. The most bitter and terrible emotions of
the human heart were written there as with a pen of fire.
"Then I looked at him;" he went on, "I said to myself, 'this is a
murder,' foolishly, for he was stabbed, not murdered; and my first
thought was to conceal the body. I dragged it to the roadside, hid it
in some bushes, and thinking I heard some one coming, leaped on my
horse, who had stood by quietly--_his_ had galloped away--and left the
cursed spot as fast as I could go. The money was left on him. I swear I
did not touch a penny of it, and would not have touched it, even if I
had not been interrupted. I had not intended to kill him. It was the
result of the struggle. I took nothing of _his_ away from that place,
but I left something of my own; the knife with which I had struck him!
"The devil had put the cursed thing into my hand; and now the devil
made me drop it there, within ten feet of the dead body.
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