On
disentangling these, pools of blood became visible; and the next ominous
sign was, that the hood of the cradle had been smashed to pieces. It
became evident that the wretch had found himself doubly embarrassed--
first, by the arched hood at the head of the cradle, which, accordingly,
he had beat into a ruin with his mallet, and secondly, by the gathering of
the blankets and pillows about the baby's head. The free play of his blows
had thus been baffled. And he had therefore finished the scene by applying
his razor to the throat of the little innocent; after which, with no
apparent purpose, as though he had become confused by the spectacle of his
own atrocities, he had busied himself in piling the clothes elaborately
over the child's corpse. This incident undeniably gave the character of a
vindictive proceeding to the whole affair, and so far confirmed the
current rumor that the quarrel between Williams and Marr had originated in
rivalship. One writer, indeed, alleged that the murderer might have found
it necessary for his own safety to extinguish the crying of the child; but
it was justly replied, that a child only eight months old could not have
cried under any sense of the tragedy proceeding, but simply in its
ordinary way for the absence of its mother; and such a cry, even if
audible at all out of the house, must have been precisely what the
neighbors were hearing constantly, so that it could have drawn no special
attention, nor suggested any reasonable alarm to the murderer.
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