The candle stood on the counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught; and by that inconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with noiseless bustle and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces of the portraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images in water.
The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer of shadows with a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger.
From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life.

In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust.

Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing.

And yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent voices.
There it must lie; there was none to work the cunning hinges or direct the miracle of locomotion--there it must lie till it was found.

Found! ay, and then?
Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry that would ring over England, and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit.