Page:Adventures of Rachel Cunningham.djvu/34

 "A fearful what? A folly." cried she, "too weak for thought! Resolve at once—I'll aid you in it, and stake my life upon the danger being nothing."

Having all their infernal machinery of destruction in perfect readiness, as he (the Sheriff,) had always in his possession the key of a small private door of his house, by which at all hours of the night he had been accustomed, at time, to enter, no difficulty was opposed to their admission, and if perchance heard in the house by any of the servants, no suspicion of its being any one but their master was at all likely to be excited; therefore, a little after midnight, of the night appointed, Van Swearingen, with his demon-like accomplice, Rachel, entered by the door alluded to; they proceeded upstairs cautiously to the bedchamber, where his wife lay fast asleep, (it was her last.) in peaceful unconsciousness of the murderous hand being so nigh.

They now, with the instruments of death, while still she slept, approached her bed arranging themselves, Rachel one side, and the husband of their victim on the other, each holding an end of a strong cord brought with them for the purpose ready prepared, with a running noose in the middle of it, to be slipped over the head to the neck of the so destined sacrifice to lust and treachery: but lest, in effecting this, alarm might arise out of her awaking too soon, to secure her certain silence they, at the moment of passing the noose over her head, instantly covered her whole face, eyes, nose, and month, with a thickly-spread plaister of birdlime closely pressed upon it; and each, in the act of wrangling her, and drawing the noose light about her neck, pulled at the opposite ends of the cord with all their might for some time, and then made each end fast to the bed-posts, that possibility of returning life might remain.

They then ransacked every secret drawer, place, and cabinet recess, and took every portable valuable they could find in the room, or elsewhere at hand. That done, they placed and lighted a quantity of combustible materials