himself, but to glory in any crime proposed or
committed. He was under the belief that he
had made a bargain with Satan, who, in return
for implicit obedience, would bear him harmless
through all the consequences of such submission,
and finally raise him to great power and authority.
It is no unfrequent illusion of homicidal
maniacs to suppose they are under the influence
of the Evil One, or possessed by a Demon.
Murderers have assigned as the only reason they
themselves could give for their crime, that "the
Devil got into them," and urged the deed. But
the insane have, perhaps, no attribute more in
common than that of superweening self-esteem.
The maniac who has been removed from a garret,
sticks straws in his hair and calls them a crown.
So much does inordinate arrogance characterise
mental aberration, that, in the course of my
own practice, I have detected, in that infirmity,
the certain symptom of insanity, especially
moral insanity, long before the brain had made
its disease manifest even to the most familiar
kindred.

Morbid self-esteem accordingly pervaded the
dreadful illusion by which the man I now speak
of was possessed. He was proud to be the
protected agent of the Fallen Angel. And
if that self-esteem were artfully appealed to,
he would exult superbly in the evil he held
himself ordered to perform, as if a special
prerogative, an official rank and privilege;
then, he would be led on to boast gleefully of
thoughts which the most cynical of criminals,
in whom intelligence was not ruined, would
shrink from owning. Then, he would reveal
himself in all his deformity with as complacent
and frank a self-glorying as some vain good man
displays in parading his amiable sentiments and
his beneficent deeds.

"If," said the superintendent, "this be the
patient who has escaped from me, and if his
propensity to homicide has been, in some way,
directed towards the person who has been
murdered, I shall not be with him a quarter of an
hour before he will inform me how it happened,
and detail the arts he employed in shifting his
crime upon another —all will be told as minutely
as a child tells the tale of some schoolboy exploit,
in which he counts on your sympathy, and feels
sure of your applause."

Margrave brought this gentleman back to
L——, took him to the mayor, who was one
of my warmest supporters; the mayor had
sufficient influence to dictate and arrange the
rest. The superintendent was introduced to
the room in which the pretended American
was lodged. At his own desire a select number
of witnesses were admitted with him —
Margrave excused himself; he said candidly that he
was too intimate a friend of mine to be an
impartial listener to aught that concerned me so
nearly.

The superintendent proved right in his
suspicions, and verified his promises. My false
accuser was his missing patient; the man
recognised Dr. * * * with no apparent terror,
rather with an air of condescension, and in a
very few minutes was led to tell his own
tale, with a gloating complacency both at the
agency by which he deemed himself exalted,
and at the dexterous cunning with which he had
acquitted himself of the task, that increased the
horror of his narrative.

He spoke of the mode of his escape, which
was extremely ingenious, but of which the
details, long in themselves, did not interest me,
and I understood them too imperfectly to repeat.
He had encountered a seafaring traveller on the
road, whom he had knocked down with a stone
and robbed of his glazed hat and pea-jacket, as
well as of a small sum in coin, which last
enabled him to pay his fare in a railway that
conveyed him eighty miles away from the
asylum. Some trifling remnant of this money
still in his pocket, he then travelled on foot
along the high road till he came to a town about
twenty miles distant from L——; there he had
stayed  a day or two, and there he said "that
the Devil had told him to buy a case-knife,
which he did." "He knew by that order that
the Devil meant him to do something great."
"His Master," as he called the fiend, then
directed him the road he should take. He came
to L——, put up, as he had correctly stated
before, at a small inn, wandered at night about
the town, was surprised by the sudden storm,
took shelter under the convent arch, overheard
somewhat more of my conversation with Sir
Philip than he had previously deposed—heard
enough to excite his curiosity as to the casket:
"While he listened, his Master told him that he
must get possession of that casket." Sir Philip
had quitted the archway almost immediately
after I had done so, and he would then have
attacked him if he had not caught sight of a
policeman going his rounds. He had followed
Sir Philip to a house (Mr. Jeeves's). "His
Master told him to wait and watch." He did
so. When Sir Philip came forth, towards the
dawn, he followed him, saw him enter a narrow
street, came up to him, seized him by the arm,
demanded all he had about him. Sir Philip
tried to shake him off—struck at him. What
follows, I spare the reader. The deed was
done. He robbed the dead man, both of the
casket and of the purse that he found in the
pockets; had scarcely done so when he heard
footsteps. He had just time to get behind
the portico of a detached house at angles
with the street, when I came up. He
witnessed, from his hiding-place, the brief
conference between myself and the policemen, and
when they moved on, bearing the body, stole
unobserved away. He was going back towards
the inn, when it occurred to him that it would
be safer if the casket and purse were not about
his person; that he asked his Master to direct
him how to dispose of them; that his Master
guided him to an open yard (a stone-mason's),
at a very little distance from the inn; that in
this yard there stood an old wych-elm tree, from
the gnarled roots of which the earth was worn
away, leaving chinks and hollows, in one of
which he placed the casket and purse, taking