COUSIN Seth—There are reasons why I cannot come to the house again, even to the funeral; and why I shall not see you again during your stay. I think you will understand them. If you explain to Aunt Sabrina that I am ill, it will not be a falsehood. I have been and am suffering—terribly. But nobody can help me, save by leaving me to myself. I am trying to forget, too, everything that was said when we last talked together, and I shall succeed. Never fear, I shall succeed. A.

It was this note, scrawled in a hand very unlike Miss Annie’s customary prim, school-teacher’s writing, which Samantha had borne over from the Warren house. Seth had studied it, perplexedly, for a long time on the evening of its arrival. He ruminated now again upon it, as he walked along the road toward Thessaly, the following forenoon. The temptation to confide the thing to John, who had stayed over night with him at the homestead, and now was walking silently by his side toward the village, wavered in his mind. Perhaps John could assist him to comprehend it; but then, it would be necessary to explain so much to him first. Finally the arguments in favor of confession triumphed, and with a “Here, old man; this is a letter from Annie. I want you to help me guess what it means,” he made the plunge.

John read the note carefully. “What was it you talked about on this occasion she refers to, and when was it?” he asked.

“It was night before last, the night, and I asked her to marry me.”

“And what was her answer?—I’ll tell you afterward how glad I am to hear what you’ve just told me.”

“Well, it wasn’t decisive—but she admitted that it made her very happy.”

“And you haven’t seen her since?”

“No—or yes! I did. I met her just for a moment yesterday forenoon, as I was starting out from the house after hearing—the news. We only exchanged a word or two, though.”

“Did she seem angry with you then?”

“Not at all!”

“Well, what can have happened since? Try and think! She has reasons, she says, which she thinks you will understand. When a woman says she has ‘reasons’ she means that some mischief-maker has told her something disagreeable. Now——”

“Oh, my God! I see it now!” Seth stopped short in the road, and clenched his fists.

“Well, what is it?”

“She went into the house, and saw Isabel!” Seth continued, as if talking to himself.

“What has that got to do with it?”

Seth looked up at his brother with a blanching face, in which fright and amazement blended. “What is that line of Congreve’s about Hell having no fury like a woman scorned?” he asked mechanically.

It was John’s turn to stare. Gradually a light began to spread in his mind, and make things visible whose existence he had not suspected before. “Well, you are a simpleton!” he said.

“Don’t I know it?” was the pained, contrite response.

The brothers walked on a few yards in silence. Then John said “Of course, you needn’t tell me any more of this than you want to—but at least I can ask you—how much of a fool have you made of yourself up at the farm?”

“That’s hard to say. Just now I’m inclined to think that I am the champion ass of the world.”

“Well, you’re displaying some sense now, anyway. What have you done?”

“I haven’t done anything. That’s the foolish part of it all.”

John stopped in turn, and looked his brother’s face attentively over. “Go on, now,” he said, “and tell me what there is of it. There’s no use in my butting my brains out against a stone wall, guessing at such an inscrutable mess as this seems to be.”

“It’s hard to tell—there isn’t anything specially to tell. I simply got sort of sentimental about Isabel, you know—she was lonely and disappointed in life, and my coming to the farm was about the only chance for company she got, and all that—and then I found the thing might go too far and so I stopped it—and to clinch the thing, asked Annie to marry me. That’s what there is of it.”

“That’s good as far as it goes. Go on, youngster; out with the rest of it!”

“I tell you that is all.”

“Humbug! Annie never wrote this letter on the strength of such philandering nonsense as that. You say Isabel must have told her something. What was that something? Do you know?”

“Yes!” The answer was so full of despondent pain, that John’s sympathy rose above his fraternal censariousness.

“Come, my boy,” he said, “you’d better make a clean breast of it. It won’t seem half so bad, once you’ve told me. And if I can help you, you know I will.”

“Well, I will tell you, John. Night before last, Monday night, I had hard words with Albert, up at the house. You know how he sent for me, insisted on my coming, and what he wanted. Of course I could only say no, and we quarreled. Toward the end we raised our voices, and Isabel, who was upstairs, overheard us. Just then he began about me and her—it seems he had noticed or heard something—and she, hearing her name, took it for granted the whole quarrel was about her. I went upstairs, and presently he drove out of the yard with the grays. I couldn’t sleep, I was so agitated by the idea of our rupture, and I went out to walk it off. It was while I was out that I met Annie and had the talk I have told you about. Then I came home, went to bed, and slept till after ten—long after everybody else had heard the news. I heard of it first from Isabel, and she—she——”

He came to an abrupt halt. The duty of saying nothing which should incriminate the woman rose before him, and fettered his tongue.

“And she—what?” asked John.

“Well, she somehow got the idea that I had followed Albert out and—and—was responsible for his death! Now. you have it all!”

There was a long silence. They were nearing the four corners, and walking slowly. Finally John, with his eyes on the ground, said: “And so that’s what she has told Annie, you think?”

“That’s the only way I can explain the note.”

“But Annie couldn’t possibly believe such a thing as that!”

“No—but there’s an explanation for that too. Come to think of it, I must have said a lot of things to her, that night, which seem now to her to fit in with this awful theory. Poor girl! I don’t blame her.”

John answered, after a pause, “There’s no use of my saying anything to show you what a situation you are in, or to scold you for it. I suppose you realize it fully enough. What’s more to the purpose, we must consider what is to be done. It is safe enough to assume that if Isabel thinks this and has said it to one person, either some one else will think it, or she will hint about it to another. The thing is too terrible to have even one person, even if she were silent as the grave, think about it. The obvious thing, I should think, would be to have a postmortem examination.”

“I thought they always had them at inquests.”
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