Lives of Alcyone

Such a suggestion coming into his mind so strongly quite
confounded him, and he could not in the least understand it, until
suddenly he seemed half to see and half to sense behind it the form
of the suitor whom he had been obliged to kill; and he realised that
this diabolical suggestion was only another of that man’ s methods
of trying to injure him. This once understood, the suggestion was
instantly and finally repudiated, and he thought little more of it. until
suddenly news arrived that his old curmudgeon of an uncle had
mysteriously disappeared—and then, a little later, that his body had
been found, showing clear traces of murder.
The next news that he had after this was brought by the
officers of the law, who came to arrest him for the commission of the
crime. He of course protested his innocence, but they simply
laughed at what he said, and told him that he could explain all that to
the judge, but that they did not think that he would succeed in
persuading him to believe him. He lay in prison for some time, and
was then brought up for trial. The case as represented against him
utterly confounded him; his own dagger had been found concealed
in his uncle’ s room, and the wounds upon the body had obviously
been made by that, or some exactly similar weapon. Two men
swore to having seen him enter his uncle’ s house on the night in
question, and his uncle’ s servant testified to having admitted him,
and afterwards having heard the sounds of a struggle of some sort,
and heavy groans proceeding from the door closed in some way that
made it impossible to open it, and when some hours afterwards he
succeeded in making his way in, he found no one there, though the
blood and the traces of the struggle were evident.