The alarm was soon given, and the house which had lately been so quiet resounded with the tramp
of many footsteps, a surgeon among the rest. The wound was small, but the point of the blade had
touched the heart of the victim, who lay on his back, pale, fixed, dead, as if he had scarcely moved after
the infliction of the blow. In a quarter of an hour the news that a gentleman who was a temporary visitor
to the town had been stabbed in his bed, spread through every street and villa of the popular watering-
place.