Fathom

( Ferdinand Count ), a villain who robs his benefactors, pillages any one, and finally dies in misery and despair.—T. Smollett, The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (1754). (The gang being absent, an old beldame conveys the count to a rude apartment to sleep in. Here he found the dead body of a man lately stabbed and concealed in some straw; and the account of his sensations during the night, the horrid device by which he saved his life (by lifting the corpse into his own bed), and his escape, guided by the hag, is terrifically tragic).