The Lauson Tragedy: Ii

THE search for the missing Aunt Mercy continued until it aroused the interest and temper of Squire Lauson. Determined to find his daughter once that he had set about it, and petulant at the failure of one line of investigation after another, the hard old gentleman stumped noisily about the house, his thick shoes squeaking down the passages like two bands of music, and his peeled hickory cane punching open doors and upsetting furniture. When he returned to the sitting-room from one of these boisterous expeditions, he found his wife sitting in the light of the kerosene lamp, and sewing with an impatient, an almost spiteful rapidity, as was her custom when her nerves were unbearably irritated.

“Where’s Mercy?” he trumpeted. “ Where is the old gal ? Has anybody eloped with her ? I saw Deacon Jones about this afternoon.”

This jest was meant to amuse and perhaps to conciliate Mrs. Lauson, for whom he sometimes seemed to have a rough pity, as hard to bear as downright hostility. He had now and then a way of joking with her and forcing her to smile by looking her steadily in the eye. But this time his moral despotism failed ; she answered his gaze with a defiant glare, and remained sullen ; after another moment she rushed out of the room, as if craving relief from his domineering presence.

Apparently the Squire would have called her back, had not his attention been diverted by the entry of his granddaughter.

“ I say, Bessie, have you looked in the garden ? ” he demanded. “ Why the Devil have n’t you ? Don’t you know Mercy’s Hole where she meditates ? Go there and hunt for her.”

As the girl disappeared he turned to the door through which his wife had fled, as if he still had a savage mind to roar for her reappearance. But after pondering a moment, and deciding that he was more comfortable in solitude, he sat slowly down in his usual elbowchair, and broke out in a growling soliloquy : —

“There’s no comfort like making one’s self miserable. It’s a—sight better than making the best of it. We ’re all having a devilish fine time. We 're as happy as bugs in a rug. Hey diddle diddle, the cat’s in the fiddle —”

The continuity of his rough-laid stonewall sarcasm was interrupted by Bessie, who rushed into the sitting-room with a low shriek and a pallid face.

“What’s the matter now?” he demanded. “Has the cow jumped over the moon ? ”

“ O grandfather ! ” she gasped. “ I ’ve found Aunt Mercy. I’m afraid she’s dead.”

“ Hey ! ” exclaimed the Squire, starting up eagerly as he remembered that Aunt Mercy was his own child. “ You don’t say so ! Where is she ? ”

Bessie turned and reeled out of the house ; the old man thumped after her on his cane. At the bottom of the garden was a small, neglected arbor, thickly overgrown with grape-vines in unpruned leaf, whither Aunt Mercy was accustomed to repair in her seasons of unusual perplexity or gloom, there to seek guidance or relief in meditation and prayer. In this arbor they found her, seated crouchingly on a bench near the doorway, her arms stretched over a little table in front of her, and her head lying between them with the face turned from the gazers. The moon glared in a ghastly way upon her ominously white hands, and disclosed a dark yet gleaming stain, seemingly a drying pool, which spread out from beneath her forehead.

“ Good Lord ! ” groaned Squire Lauson. “ Mercy ! I say, Mercy ! ”

He seized her hand, but he had scarcely touched it ere he dropped it, for it was the icy, repulsive, alarming hand of a corpse. We must compress our description of this scene of horrible discovery. Miss Mercy Lauson was dead, the victim of a brutal assassination, her right temple opened by a gash two inches deep, her blood already clotted in pools or dried upon her face and fingers. It must have been an hour, or perhaps two hours, since the blow had been dealt. At her feet was the fatal weapon, — an old hatchet which had long lain about the garden, and which offered no suggestion as to who was the murderer.

When it first became clear to Squire Lauson that his daughter was dead, and had been murdered, he uttered a sound between a gasp and a sob ; but almost immediately afterward he spoke in his habitually vigorous and rasping voice, and his words showed that he had not lost his iron self-possession.

“ Bessie, run into the house,” he said. “ Call the hired men, and bring a lantern with you.”

When she returned he took the lantern, threw the gleam of it over his dead daughter’s face, groaned, shook his head, and then, leaning on his cane, commenced examining the earth, evidently in search of footmarks.

“ There’s your print, Bessie,” he mumbled. “ And there’s my print. But whose print’s that ? That’s the man. That’s a long slim foot, with nails across the ball. That’s the man. Don’t disturb those tracks. I ’ll set the lantern down there. Don’t you disturb ’em.”

There were several of these strange tracks; the clayey soil of the walk, slightly tempered with sand, had preserved them with fatal distinctness ; it showed them advancing to the arbor and halting close by the murdered woman. As Bessie stared at them, it seemed to her that they were fearfully familiar, though where she had seen them before she could not say.

“ Keep away from those tracks,” repeated Squire Lauson as the two laborers who lived with him came down the garden. “ Now, then, what are you staring at ? She’s dead. Take her up — O, for God’s sake, be gentle about it! — take her up, I tell you. There ! Now, carry her along.”

As the men moved on with the body he turned to Bessie and said : “ Leave the lantern just there. And don’t you touch those tracks. Go on into the house.”

With his own hands he aided to lay out his daughter on a table, and drew her cap from her temples so as to expose the bloody gash to view. There was a little natural agony in the tremulousness of his stubbly and grizzly chin ; but in the glitter of his gray eyes there was an expression which was not so much sorrow as revenge.

“That’s a pretty job,” he said at last, glaring at the mangled gray head. “ I should like to l'arn who did it.”

It was not known till the day following how he passed the next half-hour. It seems that, some little time previous, this man of over ninety years had conceived the idea of repairing with his own hands the cracked wall of his parlor, and had for that purpose bought a quantity of plaster of Paris and commenced a series of patient experiments in mixing and applying it. Furnished with a basin of his prepared material, he stalked out to the arbor and busied himself with taking a mould of the strange footstep to which he had called Bessie’s attention, succeeding in his labor so well as to be able to show next day an exact counterpart of the sole which had made the track.

Shortly after he had left the house, and glancing cautiously about as if to make sure that he had indeed left it, his wife entered the room where lay the dead body. She came slowly up to the table, and looked at the ghastly face for some moments in silence, with precisely that staid, slightly shuddering air which one often sees at funerals, and without any sign of the excitement which one naturally expects in the witnesses of a mortal tragedy. In any ordinary person, in any one who was not, like her, denaturalized by the egotism of shattered nerves, such mere wonder and repugnance would have appeared incomprehensibly brutal. But Mrs. Lauson had a character of her own ; she could be different from others without exciting prolonged or specially severe comment ; people said to themselves, “Just like her,” and made no further criticism, and almost certainly no remonstrance. Bessie herself, the moment she had exclaimed, “ O grandmother ! what shall we do ? ” felt how absurd it was to address such an appeal to such a person.

Mrs. Lauson replied by a glance which expressed weakness, alarm, and aversion, and which demanded, as plainly as words could say it, “ How can you ask me?” Then without uttering a syllable, without attempting to render any service or funereal courtesy, bearing herself like one who had been mysteriously absolved from the duties of sympathy and decorum, she turned her back on the body of her step-daughter with a start of disgust, and walked hastily from the room.

Of course there was a gathering of the neighbors, a hasty and useless search after the murderer, a medical examination of the victim, and a legal inquest at the earliest practicable moment, the verdict being “death by the hand of some person unknown.” Even the funeral passed, with its mighty crowd and its solemn excitement; and still public suspicion had not dared to single out any one as the criminal. It seemed for a day or two as if the family life might shortly settle into its old tenor, the same narrow routine of quiet discontent or irrational bickerings, with no change but the loss of such inflammation as formerly arose from Aunt Mercy’s well-meant, but irritating sense of duty. The Squire, however, was permanently and greatly changed : not that he had lost the spirit of petty dictation which led him to interfere in every household act, even to the boiling of the pot, but he had acquired a new object in life, and one which seemed to restore all his youthful energy ; he was more restlessly and distressingly vital than he had been for years. No Indian was ever more intent on avenging a debt of blood than was he on hunting down the murderer of his daughter. This terrible old man has a strong attraction for us : we feel that we have not thus far done him justice: he imperiously demands further description.

Squire Lauson was at this time ninety-three years of age. The fact appeared incredible, because he had preserved, almost unimpaired, not only his moral energy and intellectual faculties, but also his physical senses, and even to an extraordinary degree his muscular strength. His long and carelessly worn hair was not white, but merely gray; and his only baldness was a shining hand’s-breadth, prolonging the height of his forehead. His face was deeply wrinkled, but more apparently with thought and passion than from decay, for the flesh was still well under control of the muscles, and the expression was so vigorous that one was tempted to call it robust. There was nothing of that insipid and almost babyish tranquillity which is commonly observable in the countenances of the extremely aged. The cheekbones were heavy, though the healthy fulness of the cheeks prevented them from being pointed ; the jaws, not yet attenuated by the loss of many teeth, were unusually prominent and muscular ; the heavy Roman nose still stood high above the projecting chin. In general, it was a long, large face, grimly and ruggedly massive, of a uniform grayish color, and reminding you of a visage carved in granite.

In figure the Squire was of medium height, with a deep chest and heavy limbs. He did not stand quite upright, but the stoop was in his shoulders and not in his loins, and arose from a slouching habit of carrying himself much more than from weakness. He walked with a cane, but his step, though rather short, was strong and rapid, and he could get over the ground at the rate of three miles an hour. At times he seemed a little deaf, but it was mainly from absorption of mind and inattention, and he could hear perfectly when he was interested. The great gray eyes under his bushy, pepper-andsalt eyebrows were still so sound that he only used spectacles in reading. As for voice, there was hardly such another in the neighborhood ; it was a strong, rasping, dictatorial caw, like the utterance of a gigantic crow ; it might have served the needs of a seacaptain in a tempest. A jocose neighbor related that he had in a dream descended into hell, and that in trying to find his way out he had lost his reckoning, until, hearing a tremendous volley of oaths on the surface of the earth over his head, he knew that he was under the hills of Barham, and that Squire Lauson was swearing at his oxen.

Squire Lauson was immense; you might travel over him for a week without discovering half his wonders ; he was a continent, and he must remain for the most part an unknown continent. Bringing to a close our explorations into his character and past life, we will follow him up simply as one of the personages of this tragedy. He was at the present time very active, but also to a certain extent inexplicable. It was known that he had interviews with various officials of justice, that he furnished them with his plaster cast of the strange footprint which had been found in the garden, and that he earnestly impressed upon them the value of this object for the purpose of tracking out the murderer. But he had other lines of investigation in his steady old hands, as was discoverable later.

His manner towards his granddaughter and his wife changed noticeably. Instead of treating the first with neglect and the second with persistent hostility or derision, he became assiduously attentive to them, addressed them frequently in conversation, and sought to win their confidence. With Bessie this task was easy, for she was one of those natural, unspoiled women, who long for sympathy, and she inclined toward her grandfather the moment she saw any kindness in his eyes. They had long talks about the murdered relative, about every event or suspicion which seemed to relate to her death, about the property which she had left to Bessie, and about the girl’s prospects in life.

Not so with Mrs. Lauson. Even the horror which had entered the family life could not open the hard crust which disease and disappointment had formed over her nature, and she met the old man’s attempts to make her communicative with her usual sulky or pettish reticence. There never was such an unreasonable creature as this wretched wife, who, while she remained unmarried, had striven so hard to be agreeable to the other sex. It was not with her husband alone that she fought, but with every one, whether man or woman, who came near her. Whoever entered the house, whether it were some gossiping neighbor or the clergyman or the doctor, she flew out of it on discovering their approach, and wandered alone about the fields until they departed. This absence she would perhaps employ in eating green fruit, hoping, as she said, to make herself sick and die, or, at least, to make herself sick enough to plague her husband. At meals she generally sat in glum silence, although once or twice .

she burst out in violent tirades, scoffing at the Squire’s management of the place, defying him to strike her, etc.

Her appearance at this time was miserable and little less than disgusting. Her skin was thick and yellow; her eyes were bloodshot and watery ; her nose was reddened with frequent crying ; her form was of an almost skeleton thinness ; her manner was full of strange starts and gaspings. It was curious to note the contrast between her perfect wretchedness of aspect and the unfeeling coolness with which the Squire watched and studied her.

In this woful way was the Lauson family getting on when the country around was electrified by an event which almost threw the murder itself into the shade. Henry Foster, the accepted lover of Bessie Barron, a professor in the Scientific College of Hampstead, was suddenly arrested as the assassin of Miss Mercy Lauson.

“ What does this mean ! ” was his perfectly natural exclamation, when seized by the officers of justice ; but it was uttered with a sudden pallor which awakened in the bystanders a strong suspicion of his guilt. No definite answer was made to his question until he was closeted with the lawyer whom he immediately retained in his defence.

“ I should like to get at the whole of your case, Mr. Foster,” said the legal gentleman. “ I must beg you, for your own sake, to be entirely frank with me.”

“ I assure you that I know nothing about the murder,” was the firm reply. “ I don’t so much as understand why I should be suspected of the horrible business.”

The lawyer, Mr. Adams Patterson, after studying Foster in a furtive way, as if doubtful whether there had been perfect honesty in his assertion of innocence, went on to state what he supposed would be the case of the prosecution.

“ The evidence against you,” he said, “ so far at least as I can now discover, will all be circumstantial. They will endeavor to prove your presence at the scene of the tragedy by your tracks.

Footmarks, said to correspond to yours, were found passing the door of the arbor, returning to it and going away from it.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Foster, “I remember,— I did pass there. I will tell you how. It was in the afternoon.

I was in the house during a thunderstorm which happened that day, and left it shortly after the shower ended.

I went out through the garden because that was the nearest way to the rivulet at the bottom of the hill, and I wished to make some examinations into the structure of the water-bed. A part of the garden walk is gravelled, and on that I suppose my tracks did not show. But near the arbor the gravel ceases, and there I remember stepping into the damp mould. I did pass the arbor, and I did return to it. I returned to it because it had been a heavenly place to me. It was there that I proposed to Miss Barron, and that she accepted me. The moment that I had passed it I reproached myself for doing so. I went back, looked at the little spot for a moment, and left a kiss on the table. It was on that table that her hand had rested when I first dared to take it in mine.”

His voice broke for an instant with an emotion which every one who has ever loved can at least partially understand.

“ Good Heavens ! to think that such an impulse should entangle me in such a charge ! ” he added, when he could speak again.

“ Well,” he resumed, after a long sigh, “ I left the arbor, —my heart as innocent and happy as any heart in the world,— I climbed over the fence and went down the hill. That is the last time that I was in those grounds that day. That is the whole truth, so help me God ! ”

The lawyer seemed touched. Even then, however, he was saying to himself, “They always keep back something, if not everything.” After meditating for a few seconds, he resumed his interrogatory.

“ Did any one see you ? did Miss Barron see you, as you passed through the garden ? ”

“ I think not. Some one called her just as I left her, and she went, I believe, up stairs.”

“ Did you see the person who called? Did you see any one ? ”

“No one. But the voice was a woman’s voice. I took it to be that of a servant.”

Mr. Patterson fell into a thoughtful silence, his arms resting on the elbows of his chair, and his anxious eyes wandering over the floor.

“ But what motive ? ” broke out Foster, addressing the lawyer as if he were an accuser and an enemy, — “ what sufficient motive had I for such a hideous crime ? ”

“ Ah ! that is just it. The motive ! They will make a great deal of that. Why, you must be able to guess what is alleged. Miss Lauson had made a will in her niece’s favor, but had threatened to disinherit her if she married you This fact,—as has been made known by an incautious admission of Miss Bessie Barron, — this fact you were aware of. The death came just in time to prevent a change in the will. Don’t you see the obvious inference of the prosecution ? ”

“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Foster, springing up and pacing his cell. “I murder a woman, — murder my wife’s aunt, — for money, — for twenty thousand dollars ! Am I held so low as that ? Why, it is a sum that any clever man can earn in this country in a few years. We could have done without it. I would not have asked for it, much less murdered for it. Tell me, Mr. Patterson, do you suppose me capable of such degrading as well as such horrible guilt ? ”

“Mr. Foster,” replied the lawyer, with impressive deliberation, “ I shall go into this case with a confidence that you are absolutely innocent.”

“ Thank you,” murmured the young man, grasping Patterson’s hand violently, and then turning away to wipe a tear, which had been too quick for him.

“Excuse my weakness,” he said, presently. “ But I don’t believe any worthy man is strong enough to bear the insult that the world has put upon me, without showing his suffering.”

Certainly, Foster’s bearing and the sentiments which he expressed had the nobility and pathos of injured innocence. Were it not that innocence can be counterfeited, as also that a fine demeanor and touching utterance are not points in law, no alarming doubt would seem to overshadow the result of the trial. And yet, strange as it must seem to those whom my narrative may have impressed in favor of Foster, the sedate, Puritanic population of Barham and its vicinity inclined more and more toward the presumption of his guilt.

For this there were two reasons. In the first place, who but he had any cause of spite against Mercy Lauson, or could hope to draw any profit from her death ? There had been no robbery; there was not a sign that the victim’s clothing had been searched ; the murder had clearly not been the work of a burglar or a thief. But Foster, if he indeed assassinated this woman, had thereby removed an obstacle to his marriage, and had secured to his future wife a considerable fortune.

In the second place, Foster was such a man as the narrowly scrupulous and orthodox world of Barham would naturally regard with suspicion. Graduate of a German university, he had brought back to America, not only a superb scientific education, but also what passed, in the region where he had settled, for a laxity of morals. Professor as he was in the austere college of Hampstead, and expected, therefore, to set a luminously correct example in both theoretical and practical ethics, he held theological opinions which were too modern to be considered sound, and he even neglected church to an extent which his position rendered scandalous. In spite of the strict prohibitory law of Massachusetts, he made use of lager-beer and other still stronger fluids ; and, although he was never known to drink to excess, the mere fact of breaking the statute was a sufficient offence to rouse prejudice. It was also reported of him, to the honest horror of many serious minds, that he had been detected in geologizing on Sunday, and that he was fond of whist.

How apt we are to infer that a man who violates our code of morals will also violate his own code ! Of course this Germanized American could not believe that murder was right ; but then he played cards and drank beer, which we of Barham knew to be wrong ; and if he would do one wrong thing, why not another ?

Meantime how was it with Bessie ? How is it always with women when those whom they love are charged with unworthiness ? Do they exhibit the “judicial mind”? Do they cautiously weigh the evidence and decide according to it ? The girl did not entertain the faintest supposition that her lover could be guilty ; she was no more capable of blackening his character than she was capable of taking his life. She would not speak to people who showed by word or look that they doubted his innocence. She raged at a world which could be so stupid, so unjust, and so wicked as to slander the good fame and threaten the life of one whom her heart had crowned with more than human perfections.

But what availed all her confidence in his purity ? There was the finger of public suspicion pointed at him, and there was the hangman lying in wait for his precious life. She was almost mad with shame, indignation, grief, and terror. She rose as pale as a ghost from sleepless nights, during which she had striven in vain to unravel this terrible mystery, and prayed in vain that Heaven would revoke this unbearable calamity. Day by day she visited her betrothed in his cell, and cheered him with the sympathy of her trusting and loving soul. The conversations which took place on these occasions were so naïve and childlike in their honest utterance of emotion that I almost dread to record them, lest the deliberate, unpalpitating sense of criticism should pronounce them sickening, and mark them for ridicule.

“ Darling,” she once said to him, “ we must be married. Whether you are to live or to die, I must be your wife.”

He knelt down and kissed the hem of her dress in adoration of such selfsacrifice.

“Ah, my love, I never before knew what you were,” he whispered, as she leaned forward, caught his head in her hands, dragged it into her lap, and covered it with kisses and tears. “ Ah, my love, you are too good. I cannot accept such a sacrifice. When I am cleared publicly of this horrible charge, then I will ask you once more if you dare be my wife.”

“ Dare ! O, how can you say such things ! ” she sobbed. “ Don’t you know that you are more to me than the whole universe ? Don’t you know that I would marry you, even if I knew you were guilty ? ”

There is no reasoning with this sublime passion of love, when it is truly itself. There is no reasoning with it; and Heaven be thanked that it is so! It is well to have one impulse in the world which has no egoism, which rejoices in self-immolation for the sake of its object, which is among emotions what a martyr is among men.

Foster’s response was worthy of the girl’s declaration. “ My love,” he whispered, “ I have been bemoaning my ruined life, but I must bemoan it no more. It is success enough for any man to be loved by you, and as you love me.”

“No, no!” protested Bessie. “It is not success enough for you. No success is enough for you. You deserve everything that ever man did deserve. And here you are insulted, trampled upon, and threatened. O, it is shameful and horrible ! ”

“ My child, you must not help to break me down,” implored Foster, feeling that he was turning weak under the thought of his calamity.

She started towards him in a spasm of remorse ; it was as if she had suddenly become aware that she had stabbed him ; her face and her attitude were full of self-reproach.

“ O my darling, do I make you more wretched?” she asked, “ when I would die for you ! when you are my all ! O, there is not a minute when I am worthy of you.”

These interviews left Foster possessed of a few minutes of consolation and peace, which would soon change into an increased poverty of despair and rage. For the first few days of his imprisonment his prevalent feeling was anger. He could not in the least accept his position ; he would not look upon himself as one who was suspected with justice, or even with the slightest show of probability ; he would not admit that society was pardonable for its doubts of him. He was not satisfied with mere hope of escape ; on the contrary, he considered his accusers shamefully and wickedly blameworthy ; he was angry at them, and wanted to wreak upon them a stern vengeance.

As the imprisonment dragged on, however, and his mind lost its tension under the pressure of trouble ; there came moments when he did not quite know himself. It seemed to him that this man, who was charged with murder, was some one else, for whose character he could not stand security, and who might be guilty. He almost looked upon him with suspicion ; he half joined the public in condemning him unheard. Perhaps this mental confusion was the foreshadowing of that insane state of mind in which prisoners have confessed themselves guilty of murders which they had not committed, and which have been eventually brought home to others. There are twilights between reason and unreason. The descent from the one condition to the other is oftener a slope than a precipice.

Meanwhile Bessie had, as a matter of course, plans for saving her lover; and these plans, almost as a matter of course too, were mainly impracticable. As with all young people and almost all women, she rebelled against the fixed procedures of society when they seemed likely to trample on the dictates of her affections. Now that it was her lover who was under suspicion of murder, it did not seem a necessity to her that the law should take its course, and, on the contrary, it seemed to her an atrocity. She knew that he was guiltless ; she knew that he was suffering; why should he be tried ? When told that he must have every legal advantage, she assented to it eagerly, and drove at once to see Mr. Patterson, and overwhelmed him with tearful implorations “ to do everything — to do everything that could be done, — yes, in short, to do everything.” But still she could not feel that anything ought to be done, except to release at once this beautiful and blameless victim, and to make him every conceivable apology. As for bringing him before a court, to answer with his life whether he were innocent or guilty, it was an injustice and an outrage which she rebelled against with all the energy of her ardent nature.

Who could prevent this infamy ? In her ignorance of the machinery of justice, it seemed to her that her grandfather might. Notwithstanding the little sympathy that there had been between them, she went to the grim old man with her sorrows and her plans, proposing to him to arrest the trial. In her love and her simplicity she would have appealed to a mountain or to a tiger.

“ What! ” roared the Squire. “ Stop the trial ? Can't do it. I’m not the prosecutor. The State’s attorney is the prosecutor.”

“But can't you say that you think the proof against him is insufficient?” urged Bessie. “ Can’t you go to them and say that ? Won’t that do it ? ”

“ Lord bless you ! ” replied Squire Lauson, staring in wonder at such ignorance, and dimly conscious of the love and sorrow which made it utter its simplicities.

“ O grandfather! do have pity on him and on me ! ” pleaded Bessie.

He gave her a kinder glance than she had ever received from him before in her life. It occurred to him, as if it were for the first time, that she was very sweet and helpless, and that she was his own grandchild. He had hated her father. O, how he had hated the conceited city upstart, with his pert, positive ways ! how he had rejoiced over his bankruptcy, if not over his death ! The girl he had taken to his home, because, after all, she was a Lauson by blood, and it would be a family shame to let her go begging her bread of strangers. But she had not won upon him ; she looked too much like that “damn jackanapes,” her father ; moreover, she had contemptible city accomplishments, and she moped in the seclusion of Barham. He had been glad when she became engaged to that other “ damn jackanapes,” Foster ; and it had been agreeable to think that her marriage would take her out of his sight. Mercy had made a will in her favor; he had sniffed and hooted at Mercy for her folly ; but, after all, he had in his heart consented to the will ; it saved him from leaving any of his money to a Barron,

Of late, however, there had been a softening in the Squire ; he could himself hardly believe that it was in his heart ; he half suspected at times that it was in his brain. A man who lives to ninety-three is exposed to this danger, that he may survive all his children. The Squire had walked to one grave after another, until he had buried his last son and his last daughter. After Mercy Lauson, there were no more children for him to see underground ; and that fact, coupled with the shocking nature of her death, had strangely shaken him ; it had produced that singular softening which we have mentioned, and which seemed to him like a malady. Now, a little shattered, no longer the man that he so long had been, he was face to face with his only living descendant.

He reached out his gray, hard hand, and laid it on her glossy, curly hair. She started with surprise at the unaccustomed touch, and looked up in his face with a tearful sparkle of hope.

“ Be quiet, Bessie,” he said, in a voice which was less like a caw than usual.

“ O grandfather ! what do you mean ? ” she sobbed, guessing that deliverance might be nigh, and yet fearing to fall back into despair.

“ Don’t cry,” was the only response of this close - mouthed, imperturbable old man.

“ O, was it any one else ?” she demanded. “Who do you think did it?”

“ I have an idea,” he admitted, after staring at her steadily, as if to impress caution. “ But keep quiet. We ’ll see.”

“ You know it could n’t be he that did it,” urged Bessie. “ Don’t you know it could n’t ? He’s too good.”

The Squire laughed. “ Why, some folks laid it to you,” he said. “ If he should be cleared, they might lay it to you again. There’s no telling who’ll do such things, and there’s no telling who ’ll be suspected.”

“ And you will do something ? ” she resumed. “You will follow it up? You will save him ?”

“ Keep quiet,” grimly answered the Squire. “ I’m watching. But keep quiet. Not a word to a living soul.”

Close on this scene came another, which proved to be the unravelling of the drama. That evening Bessie went early, as usual, to her solitary room, and prepared for one of those nights which are not a rest to the weary. She had become very religious since her trouble had come upon her ; she read several chapters in the Bible, and then she prayed long and fervently ; and, after a sob or two over her own shortcomings, the prayer was all for Foster. Such is human devotion : the voice of distress is far more fervent than the voice of worship ; the weak and sorrowful are the true suppliants.

Her prayer ended, if ever it could be said to end while she waked, she strove anew to disentangle the mystery which threatened her lover, meanwhile hearing, half unawares, the noises of the night. Darkness has its speech, its still small whisperings and mutterings, a language which cannot be heard during the clamor of day, but which to those who must listen to it is painfully audible, and which rarely has pleasant things to say, but threatens rather, or warns. For a long time, disturbed by fingers that tapped at her window, by hands that stole along her wall, by feet that glided through the dark halls, Bessie could not sleep. She lost herself ; then she came back to consciousness with the start of a swimmer struggling toward the surface; then she recommenced praying for Foster, and once more lost herself.

At last, half dozing, and yet half aware that she was weeping, she was suddenly and sharply roused by a distinct creak in the floor of her room. Bessie had in one respect inherited somewhat of her grandfather’s iron nature, being so far from habitually timorous that she was noted among her girlish acquaintance for courage. But her nerves had been seriously shaken by the late tragedy, by anxiety, and by sleeplessness ; it seemed to her that there was in the air a warning of great danger; she was half paralyzed by fright.

Struggling against her terror, she sprang out of bed and made a rush toward her door, meaning to close and lock it. Instantly there was a collision ; she had thrown herself against some advancing form ; in the next breath she was engaged in a struggle. Half out of her senses, she did not scream, did not query whether her assailant were man or woman, did not indeed use her intelligence in any distinct fashion, but only pushed and pulled in blind instinct of escape.

Once she had a sensation of being cut with some sharp instrument. Then she struck; the blow told, and her antagonist fell heavily ; the fall was succeeded by a short shriek in a woman’s voice. Bessie did not stop to wonder that any one engaged in an attempt at assassination should utter an outcry which would almost necessarily insure discovery and seizure. The shock of the sound seemed to restore her own powers of speech, and she burst into a succession of loud screams, calling on her grandfather for help.

In the same moment the hope which abides in light fell under her hand. Reeling against her dressing-table, her fingers touched a box of waxen matches, and she quickly drew one of them against the wood, sending a faint glimmer through the chamber. She was not horror-stricken, she did not grasp a comprehension of the true nature of the scene; she simply stared in trembling wonder when she recognized Mrs. Lauson.

“ You there, grandmother ! ” gasped Bessie. “ What has happened ? ”

Mrs. Lauson, attired in an old morning-gown, was sitting on the floor, partially supported by one hand, while the other was moving about as if in search of some object. The object was a carving-knife ; she saw it, clutched it, and rose to her feet; then for the first time she looked at Bessie. "What do you lie awake and pray for ? ” she demanded, in a furious mutter. “ You lie awake and pray every night. I’ve listened in the hall time and again, and heard you. I won’t have it. I ’ll give you just three minutes to get to sleep.”

Bessie did not think ; it did not occur to her, at least not in any clear manner, that this was lunacy ; she instinctively sprang behind a large chair and uttered another scream.

“ I say, will you go to sleep ? ” insisted Mrs. Lauson, advancing and raising her knife.

Just in the moment of need there were steps in the hall ; the still vigorous and courageous old Squire appeared upon the scene ; after a violent struggle the maniac was disarmed and bound. She lay upon Bessie’s bed, staring at her husband with bloodshot, watery eyes, and seemingly unconscious of anything but a sense of ill-treatment. The girl, meanwhile, had discovered a slight gash on her left arm, and had shown it to the Squire.

“ Sallie,” demanded the cold-blooded old man, “ what have you been trying to knife Bessie for?”

“ Because she lay awake and prayed,” was the ready and firm response of downright mania.

“ Look here, Sallie, what did you kill Mercy for ? ” continued the Squire, without changing a muscle of his countenance.

“ Because she sat up and prayed,” responded Mrs. Lauson. “ She sat up in the garden and prayed against me. Ever so many people sit up and lie awake to pray against me. I won’t have it.”

“ Ah ! ” said the old man. “ Do you hear that, Bessie ? Remember it, so as to say it upon your oath.”

After a second or two he added, with something like a twinkle of his characteristic humor in his hard, gray eyes, “ So I saved my life by not praying ! ”

Thus ended the extraordinary scene which brought to light the murderer of Miss Mercy Lauson. It is almost needless to add that on the day following the maniac was conveyed to the State Lunatic Asylum, and that shortly afterward Bessie opened the prison gates of Henry Foster, and told him of his absolution from charge of crime.

“ And now I want the whole world to get on its knees and ask your pardon,” she said, after a long scene of tenderer words than must be reported.

“ If the world should ask pardon for all its blunders,” he said, with a smile, “it would pass its whole time in penance, and would n’t make its living. Human life is like science, a sequence of mistakes, with generally a true direction.”

One must stick to one’s character. A philosopher is nothing if not philosophical.