"Alas! alas!" exclaimed a grave and gentle old man. "That Andrew Zane should not be here to meet a charge like this! But I'll not believe it till I have prayed with my G.o.d."

Within the Zane residence all was as in other houses on funeral eves. In the front parlor, ready for an inquest or an undertaker, lay the late master of the place, laid out, and all the visitors departed except his housekeeper, Agnes, and her friend, "Podge" Byerly. The latter was a sunny-haired and nimble little lady, under twenty years of age, who taught in one of the public schools and boarded with her former school-mate, Agnes Wilt. Agnes was an orphan of unknown parentage, by many supposed to have been a niece or relative of Mr. Zane's deceased wife, whose place she took at the head of the table, and had grown to be one of the princ.i.p.al social authorities in Kensington. In Reverend Mr.

Van de Lear's church she was both teacher and singer. The young men of Kensington were all in love with her, but it was generally understood that she had accepted Andrew Zane, and was engaged to him.

Andrew was not dissipated, but was fond of pranks, and so restive under his father's positive hand that he twice ran away to distant seaports, and thus incurred a remarkable amount of intuitive gossip, such as belongs to all old settled suburban societies. This occasional firmness of character in the midst of a generally light and flexible life, now told against him in the public mind. "He has nerve enough to do anything desperate in a pinch," exclaimed the very wisest. "Didn't William Zane find him out once in the island of Barbadoes grubbing sugar-cane with a hoe, and the thermometer at 120 in the shade? And didn't he swear he'd stay there and die unless concessions were made to him, and certain things never brought up again? Didn't even his iron-shod father have to give way before he would come home? Ah! Andrew is light-hearted, but he is an Indian in self-will!"

To-night Agnes was in the deepest grief. Upon her, and only her, fell the whole burden of this double crime and mystery, ten times more terrible that her lover was compromised and had disappeared.

"Go to bed, Podge!" said Agnes, as the clock in the engine-house struck midnight. "Oblige me, my dear! I cannot sleep, and shall wait and watch.

Perhaps Andrew will be here."

"I can't leave you up, Aggy, and with that thing so near." She locked toward the front parlor, where, behind the folding-doors, lay the dead.

"I have no fear of _that_. He was always kind to me. My fears are all in this world. O _darling_!"

She burst into sobs. Her friend kissed her again and again, and knew that feelings between love and crime extorted that last word.

"Aggy," spoke the light-hearted girl, "I know that you cannot help loving him, and as long as he is loved by you I sha'n't believe him guilty. Must I really leave you here?"

Her weeping friend turned up her face to give the mandatory kiss, and Podge was gone.

Agnes sat in solitude, with her hands folded and her heart filled with unutterable tender woe, that so much causeless cloud had settled upon the home of her refuge. She could not experience that relief many of us feel in deep adversity, that it is all illusion, and will in a moment float away like other dreams. Brought to this house an orphan, and twice deprived of a mother's love, she had only entered woman's estate when another cla.s.s of cares beset her. Her beauty and sweetness of disposition had brought her more lovers than could make her happy. There was but one on whom she could confer her heart, and this natural choice had drawn around her the perils which now overwhelmed them all.

Accepting the son, she incurred the father's resentment upon both; for he, the dead man yonder, had also been her lover.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" exclaimed the anguished woman, kneeling by her chair and laying her cheek upon it, while only such tears as we shed in supreme moments saturated her handkerchief, "what have I done to make such misery to others? How sinful I must be to set son and father against each other! Yet, Heavenly Father, I can but love!"

There was a cracking of something, as if the dead man in the great, black parlor had carried his jealousy beyond his doom and was breaking from his coffin to upbraid her. A door burst open in the dining-room, which was behind her, and then the dining-room door also unclosed, and was followed by a cold, graveyard draft. A moment of superst.i.tion possessed Agnes. "Guard me, Saviour," she murmured.

At the dining-room threshold, advancing a little over the sill, as if to rush upon her, was the figure of a man, dressed, head to foot, in sailor's garments--heavy woollens, comforter, tarpaulin overalls, and knit cap. He looked at her an instant, standing there, shivering, and then he retired a pace or two and closed the door to the cellar, by which he had entered the house. Even this little movement in the intruder had something familiar about it. He advanced again, directly and rapidly, toward her, but she did not scream. He threw both arms around her, and she did not cry. Something had entered with that bold figure which extinguished all crime and superst.i.tion in the monarchy of its presence--Love.

A kiss, as fervent and long as only the reunited ever give with purity, drew the soul of the suspected murderer and his sweetheart into one temple.

"Agnes," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely, when it was given, "they have followed me hard to-night. Every place I might have resorted to is watched. All Kensington--my oldest friends--believe me guilty! I cannot face it. With this kiss I must go."

"Oh, Andrew, do not! Here is the place to make your peace; here take your stand and await the worst."

"Agnes," he repeated, "I have no defence. Nothing but silence would defend me now, and that would hang me to the gallows. I come to put my life and soul into your hands. Can you pray for me, bad as I am?"

"Dear Andrew," answered Agnes, weeping fast, "I have no power to stop you, and I cannot give you up. Yes, I will pray for you now, before you start on your journey. Go open those folding-doors and we will pray in the other room."

"What is there?"

"Your father."

He stopped a long while, and his cheek was blanched.

"Go first," he whispered finally. "I am not afraid."

She led the way to the bier, where the body, with the frost hardly yet thawed from it, lay under the dim light of the chandelier. Turning up the burners it was revealed in its relentless, though not unhappy, expression--a large and powerful man, bearded and with ta.s.sels of gray in his hair.

The young man in his coa.r.s.e sailor's garb, m.u.f.fled up for concealment and disguise, placed his arm around Agnes, and his knees were unsteady as he gazed down on the remains and began to sob.

"Dear," she murmured, also weeping, "I know you loved him!"

The young man's sobs became so loud that Agnes drew him to a chair, and as she sat upon it he laid his head in her lap and continued there to express a deep inward agony.

"I loved him always," he articulated at last, "so help me G.o.d, I did!

And a _parricide_! Can you survive it?"

"Andrew," she replied, "I have taken it all to heaven and laid the sin there. Forever, my darling, intercession continues for all our offences only there. It must be our recourse in this separation every day when we rise and lie down. Though blood-stained, he can wash as white as snow."

"I will try, I will try!" he sobbed; "but your goodness is my reliance, dearest. I have always been disobedient to my father, but never thought it would come to this."

"Nor I, Andrew. Poor, rash uncle!"

"Agnes," whispered Andrew Zane, rising with a sudden fear, "I hear people about the house--on the pavement, on the doorsteps. Perhaps they are suspecting me. I must fly. Oh! shall we ever meet again under a brighter sky? Will you cling to me? I am going out, abandoned by all the world. Nothing is left me but your fidelity. Will it last? You know you are beautiful!"

"Oh, sad words to say!" sighed Agnes. "Let none but you ever say them to me again. Beautiful, and to the end of such misery as this! My only love, I will never forsake you!"

"Then I can try the world again, winter as it is. Once more, oh, G.o.d!

let me ask forgiveness from these frozen lips. My father! pursue me not, though deep is my offence! Farewell, farewell forever!"

He disappeared down the cellar as he had come, and Agnes heard at the outer window the sound of his escaping. When all was silent she fell to the floor, and lay there helplessly weeping.

CHAPTER III.

THE DEAF MAN.

The inquest was held, and the jury p.r.o.nounced the double crime murder by persons unknown, but with strong suspicion resting on Andrew Zane and an unknown laborer, who had left Pett.i.t's or Treaty Island, at night, in an open boat with William Zane and Sayler Rainey. A reward was offered for Andrew Zane and the laborer.

The will of the deceased persons made Andrew Zane full legatee of both estates, and left a life interest in the Queen Street house, and $2000 a year to "Agnes Wilt, my ward and housekeeper." The executors of the Zane estate were named as Agnes Wilt, Rev. Silas Van de Lear, and Duff Salter. The two dead men were interred together in the old Presbyterian burial-ground, and after a month or two of diminishing excitement, Kensington settled down to the idea that there was a great mystery somewhere; that Andrew Zane was probably guilty; but that the princ.i.p.al evidence against him was his own flight.

As to Agnes, there was only one respectable opinion--that she was a superb work of nature and triumph of womanhood, notwithstanding romantic and possibly awkward circ.u.mstances of origin and relation. All men, of whatever time of life and for whatsoever reason, admired her--the mean and earthy if only for her mould, the morally discerning for her beautiful quality that pitied, caressed, encouraged, or elevated all who came within her sphere.

"Preachers of the Gospel ought to have such wives," said the Rev. Silas Van de Lear, looking at his son Calvin, "as Agnes Wilt. She is the most handy churchwoman in all my ministration in Kensington, which is now forty years. Besides being pious, and virtuous, and humble before G.o.d, she is very comely to the eye, and possesses a house and an independent income. A wife like that would naturally help a young minister to get a higher call."

Young Calvin, who was expected to succeed his father in the venerable church close by, and was studying divinity, said with much cool maturity:

"Pa, I've taken it all in. She's the only single girl in Kensington worth proposing to. It's true that we don't know just who she is, but it's not that I'm so much afraid of as her, her--in short, her piety."

"Piety does not stand in the way of marriage," answered the old man, who was both bold and prudent, wise and sincere. "In the covenant of G.o.d nothing is denied to his saints in righteousness. The sense of wedded pleasure, the beauty that delights the eye, love, appet.i.te, children, and financial independence--all are ours, no less as of the Elect than as worldly creatures. The love of G.o.d in the heart warms men and women toward each other."

"Oh, as to that!" exclaimed Calvin, "I've been warmed toward Miss Agnes since I was a boy. I think she is superb. But she is a little too good for me. She looks at me whenever I talk to her, whereas the proper way of humility would be to look down. She has been in love with Andrew Zane, you know!"