Chapter VIII: Part IV: A Pickaxe and a Spade (2)

The next instant he was on his feet. He dressed himself in haste, shuddering as he bundled up the stained night-robe and thrust it into the blazing fire of the stove. Then he caught up the spade, and opening the outside door stepped into the glittering sunshine. As he did so he noticed two things, equally calculated to daunt and surprise him. The first was the double row of his own footsteps running to and fro between the step and the heap of dirt and snow beside the monument; and the other, an equally plain track of footsteps extending from the place where he stood to the gate on his left. The former were easily explainable, but the latter were a mystery; for if they had been made by some nocturnal visitor, why were they all directed toward the highway? Had not the person making them come as well as gone? Puzzled and no little moved by this mystery, he nevertheless did not pause in the work he had set for himself.

Crossing in haste to the monument, he began throwing back the icy particles of earth he had dug up in the night. Though he shuddered with something more than cold as he did so, he did not desist till he had packed the snow upon the mould and left the grave looking somewhat decent. A sleigh or two shot by on the open thoroughfare without while he was engaged in this work, and each time as he heard the bells he started in painful emotion, though he did not raise his head nor desist from his labor. When all was done he came slowly back, and pausing before the second line of footsteps he examined them more carefully.

It was a woman’s tread or that of a child, and it came from his own door. Greatly troubled he rushed into the track they had made and trampled it fiercely out. When he reached the gate he stepped into the highway. The steps had passed up the street. But what were these he now perceived in the inclosure beyond the picket fence, going straight to the house and stopping before the front door? They came from the street also, and they pointed inward and not outward. Was he the victim of some temporary hallucination, or had a woman entered the house by the never-opened front door and come out through his office? It seemed incredible, impossible, but bounding up the steps he tried the door, not knowing what he might have done in the night. He found it locked as usual and drew back confounded, muttering again with stony lips, “My ways are thickening, and the end is not far off.”

When he returned again to his office it was to replace the spade in the spot from which he had evidently taken it. This was up the spiral staircase, in a small shed adjoining the large rear hall, and as he traversed the path he had unconsciously trodden twice in the night, he tried to recall what he had done under the influence of the horrible nightmare which had left behind it such visible evidences of suffering. But his consciousness was blank regarding those hours, and it was with a crushing sense of secret and overhanging doom that he prepared for his daily work, which happily or unhappily for him promised to be more exacting than usual.

A dozen persons visited his office that morning, and each person as he came glanced over at the monument and its disturbed grave. _Had any whisper of the desecration which had there taken place found way to the village?_ The doctor quailed at the thought, but his manner gave no sign of his inner emotion. He was even more punctilious than usual in his attention to the wants of his visitors, and did not give them by so much as a glance of his eye an opportunity for question or gossip. At eleven o’clock he went out. There was a very sick child at the other end of the town and he could reach it only by passing the Fisher cottage. It had been taken ill at daybreak and word had been brought him by a passing neighbor. He had hopes, though he hardly acknowledged them to himself, that some explanation of the footsteps which disturbed him would be found in the sickness of this child. But when he reached the Fisher house the sight of Polly’s disturbed face, peering from the parlor window, assured him that the cause of his trouble lay deeper than he had hitherto feared. The discovery was a great shock to him, and as he went on his way he asked himself why he had not stopped and talked to the girl and found out whether she had been to his house or not the night before, and if so, what she had seen.

But that he did not dare to do this was apparent even to himself; for after he had prescribed for his little patient he found himself taking another road home, a road which led him through frozen fields of untrodden snow, rather than run the risk of encountering Polly’s face again, with those new marks upon it of aversion and fear. When he re-entered his own gate it was with bowed head and shrunken form. His short walk through the village, with the discovery he had imagined himself to have made, cost him ten years of his youth. On his table there lay a letter. When he saw it a flush crossed his cheek and his form unconsciously assumed its wonted air of dignity and pride. It was from _her_ and the room seemed to lose something of its habitual gloom from its presence. But its tenor made him grow pale again. The letter read as follows:

DEAR FRIEND: Clarke has tried every available means to avoid the
result we feared, but as you will see from the inclosed letter from
Ephraim Earle, Polly has but one course before her, and that is to
give her father what he demands. She has so decided to-day, and if
you see no way of interfering, the money will be paid over by nine
o’clock to-morrow morning. This means years of struggle for Clarke.
You bade us not to apply to you till every other hope failed. We
have reached that point. Faithfully yours,

GRACE UNWIN.

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XIX.

TO-MORROW.

POLLY had spent an unhappy day. Her secret—for so she termed her discovery of the night before—weighed heavily upon her, and yet she felt it was impossible to part with it, even to Clarke. Some instinct of loyalty to the doctor who had been almost a parent to her influenced her to silence, though she was naturally outspoken and given to leaning on those she loved. She was sitting in the parlor, her back to the window. She had seen the doctor pass once that day and she did not want to meet his eye again. Fear had taken the place of reverence, and confidence had given way to distrust.

Suddenly she heard a door open, and rose up startled, for the sound was in the front hall and the family were all in the kitchen. Could it be Clarke returning, or her father, or—she had not time to push her conjectures further, for at this point the door of the room in which she stood swung quickly open and in the gap she saw Dr. Izard, with a face so pale that it reminded her of the glimpse she had caught of him the previous night. But there was purpose instead of the blank look of somnambulism in his eyes, and that purpose was directed toward her.

“Polly,” he said, not advancing, but holding her fascinated in her place by the intensity of his look, “do not allow yourself to be constrained to sign any check to-day. To-morrow you will no longer consider it your duty.” And before she could answer or signify her assent he was gone, and the front door had shut after him. The deep breath which escaped her lips showed what that one moment of terror had been to her. Springing to the window she looked out and started as she saw him take the direction of Carberry hill.

“He is going to see my father,” she murmured, and moved by a new terror she seized her hat and coat, and ran, rather than walked, to Mrs. Unwin’s cottage. “Where is Clarke?” was her breathless demand as she rushed impetuously into the house. “Dr. Izard is on his way to Carberry hill and I am afraid, or rather I know, there is going to be trouble between him and my father.”

“Then Clarke will prevent it. Dr. Izard sent him word an hour ago to meet him there at five o’clock, and he has been gone from the house just five minutes.”

“Oh, what is going to happen? I must see; I must go. They do not know Dr. Izard as well as I do.” And without waiting to explain her somewhat enigmatical sentence she dashed from the house and took her way up Carberry hill.

It was the first time she had been there since she was surprised at her father’s door by that father’s fatal and unexpected return; and had it not been for the excitement under which she was laboring, her limbs would have faltered and her whole soul quailed at the prospect. But love lent her wings, and a certain dogged persistence in duty which underlay the natural effervescence of her spirits kept her to her task, and so before she realized it she was at the top of that haunted hill and on the doorstep of the house which was even more repellent to her now than when the moss hung from the eaves and the seal of desolation lay upon the door.

Hearing from within the voices that she knew, she waited to give no summons, but opened the door and passed in. Three men were in the hall—Dr. Izard, Ephraim Earle, and Clarke—and from the faces they turned toward her she judged that she was not a minute too soon.

“Polly!” leaped simultaneously from the lips of her lover and from those of Dr. Izard. But the one spoke in a sort of tender surprise and the other with a mixture of anger and constraint.

“Do not mind me,” she said. “I saw you coming here, and I felt that I ought to be present.” And the determination in her face startled those who had always regarded her as a petted child. Her father, who was the only person there who seemed at all at his ease, smiled and gave her a sarcastic bow.

“This is the first time you have honored me,” he observed, and pushed a chair slightly forward. “Women are proverbially fond of controversy; why deny this very young girl, the privilege of hearing our little talk?”

The doctor, who perhaps saw more in this intrusion than the others, hesitated for a moment, with his brows lowered over his uneasy eyes, then he waved his hand as if dismissing a subject of no importance, and without saying yea or nay to the appeal which had just been made to him, he cried out in a set and desperate voice:

“I have borne with this impostor long enough. I do not know who you are,” he continued, pointing imperatively at the man before him, “but that you are not Ephraim Earle is certain. Therefore you shall no longer enjoy Ephraim Earle’s rights or profit by the money which was given to Polly for a very different purpose.”

Earle, thus attacked, first raised his brows and then smiled suavely. “You would force an issue then,” he cried. “Very well, I’m ready. Why am I not Ephraim Earle, Dr. Izard? You assert the fact, but that is not proving it. When we were young men together you were not wont to stop at assertion.”

“We were never young men together. You are a stranger to the town, a stranger to me. The letter which you wrote may deceive Polly, may deceive Clarke, may deceive every one else who reads, but it does not deceive me. What is this new invention you failed to project? Tell us on the spot or I will brand you as a wholesale deceiver up and down the town.”

“I——” the man stammered, his bold effrontery failing him for the moment.

“Have you forgotten it _again_?” sneered the doctor, seeming to grow taller and broader as his antagonist dwindled. “I expected you would hide behind that excuse. It is a convenient one. You _have_ forgotten it; well, we will let that pass and you shall tell me instead why your first one failed to operate the first time you tried it.”

“I will not,” shouted Earle, driven apparently to bay. “That it did fail you remember and so do I, but after fourteen years devoted to other subjects I am not going to try and pick up those old threads again and explain to you every step by which I won success at last.”

“But I will wait,” suggested the doctor. “You shall not be hurried; there is nothing more important to be done in town just now.”

“Isn’t there? I think there is, Dr. Izard. You have shown yourself my enemy ever since I came to Hamilton; but for reasons that were satisfactory to me I have let it pass, as you have let my so-called imposture pass. I did not wish to stir up old grievances; but you attack me and must expect to be yourself attacked. Of what complaint did Huldah Earle die? Answer me that! Or I will brand _you_ for a——”

“Hush!” The word sprang from Clarke, who had seen the doctor cower, as if some awful weight were about to be heaved upon him. “Weigh your words, Mr. Earle; for if you utter an untrue one you shall be brought to dearly rue it.”

“I will weigh them,” answered the other, growing taller in his turn as the doctor shrank before him; “weigh them in the balance of this respected man’s innocence. Look at his whitening cheek, his trembling form! If he could mention the complaint which carried my wife away in the flower of her youth, do you think he would hesitate and turn pale before her child? Or perhaps _he_ has forgotten; it is fourteen years ago, and as I have taken refuge in that excuse, why not he?”

“O God!” burst from Polly’s lips; “what horror is this?”

But the doctor, goaded by this last sting, had roused himself. “I have not forgotten,” said he. “I forget nothing; not even the slight discoloration which always disfigured Ephraim Earle’s left eye, and which is absent from yours. But I do not know the exact cause of Mrs. Earle’s death. I never knew. If you were her husband, you would remember that I several times declared I was working in the dark, and even after she was dead acknowledged myself to have failed in my diagnosis, and wished you had called down physicians from Boston.”

“Oh, I remember; but I was not deceived then by your humility, nor am I deceived by it now, I will have her body dug up. I will—”

“Oh, no! no!” shrieked Polly, thrusting out her hands before her eyes. “I—cannot—bear—this. I—I do not think the doctor can bear this. Look at him! He is not sane! He——”

“Hush, Polly! I am sane enough,” came from the doctor with a sternness which was but the result of his overpowering emotion. “If I show agitation it is because dreadful memories have been awakened and because I must yet press hard against this most audacious man. Fellow! where do you think the money came from which you have been expending so freely to keep yourself out of jail?”

“Ah! that is another small mystery with which I have thought it best not to concern myself.”

But even while speaking he drew back, and a change passed over his bold countenance. Looking at the doctor with a strange and lingering gaze, he darted to a small rack at the end of the hall, and, tearing down a cloak and an old slouch hat, he thrust the one upon the doctor’s head and the other about his shrinking shoulders. Then he drew back and surveyed him. Suddenly he struck his forehead, and a triumphant smile, which was not without an evil glare in it, lit up his features.

“Of course!” he cried, “I might have known it! You are the fellow who visited the Chicago hospital that night and who——”

“And you are No. Thirteen!” was the quick response; “the man given over for dead! Oh, I see how you came to be here. Rascal! Villain!”

“Doctor, allow me to return the compliment. Why did you use such subterfuges to transfer a fortune into my daughter’s hands? Was it from a good motive or because you felt yourself guilty of her parent’s death, and so sought to make amends without awakening suspicion?”

“I should have whispered _ten_ thousand dollars into your ear instead of one,” muttered the doctor, lost in contemplation of the other’s duplicity.

“I would have given no more sign for ten than for one,” answered Earle. “Remember, I had just heard of an unknown sum bequeathed to my daughter, and the larger the hush money offered the greater would the fortune have appeared.”

Clarke, to whom these words were well nigh unintelligible, consulted Polly’s countenance, and seemed to question what she thought of them. But she was gazing at the doctor, wonder and repugnance in all her looks.

“Oh, do you mean that even this money is not all my own? That it is not the gift of a stranger, but has come, in some incomprehensible way, from _him_?”

The doctor, stung by her tone, turned toward her, saw the slender finger pointing accusingly at him, and drooped his head with a gesture of despair.

“Does it lose its value,” he asked, “because it represents the labor and privations of twenty busy years?”

“Does it represent anything else?” she protested. “Why should you give money to me?”

“I cannot answer; not here. To-morrow at your mother’s grave I will. Come yourself, let your neighbors come, only see that one person is kept away. Years ago I loved Grace Hasbrouck, and I would not have her the witness of my shame. Keep her away, Clarke! My task would be too difficult were she there.”

Clarke, to whom this avowal was a revelation, stammered and bowed his head. Mr. Earle softly smiled.

“Then you avow—” he began.

But the doctor turned upon him and thundered, “I avow nothing. I merely wish to prove to this town that you are an impostor, and I will do it to-morrow at seven at Huldah Earle’s grave. You are a bold man and a quick one, and have learned your lesson well. But there is one thing before which you must succumb and that is the presence of the true Ephraim Earle.”

“And you will produce him?”

“I will produce him.”

“And in such haste?”

“Yes, in such haste.”

There was something so astounding in this threat and in the resolve with which it was uttered that not only Clarke Unwin recoiled, but the hardy adventurer himself showed momentary signs of quailing. But he quickly recovered himself, and glancing at Polly, who stood clinging to Clarke, white as a wraith in her terror and amazement, cried aloud: “Now I know you for a madman. Being Ephraim Earle myself, and innocent of any deeper crime than the one I have frankly acknowledged to you, I can afford to meet my double, even at my poor wife’s grave. Doubtless he will be a very good semblance of myself, and my only wonder is that the doctor has not produced him sooner.”

“Laugh, laugh!” repeated the doctor, in a terrible voice, “for to-morrow you will be in prison.” And stalking by them all, he proceeded to the door, where he paused to say in a voice whose solemn tones rang long in their ears, “Remember! to-morrow morning at seven in the churchyard.” And he was gone.

A silence which even the dazed adventurer dared not break followed this startling exit. Then Polly, in a quivering voice, murmured below her breath, “He is mad! I knew it before I came here. Pray Heaven that he has not been made so by crime.”

At these words, so unexpected and so welcome to the man whose position had been thus violently threatened, Earle lifted his head and cast a reassured look about him.

“Stick to that, my daughter,” he muttered, “stick to that; it is the only explanation of his conduct;” and walking down the hall he added in a subdued tone, as he passed the hitherto unnoticed figure of a man standing in the rear passage, “I will still have the five thousand dollars! Nothing that this madman can do will hinder that.”

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XX.

DR. IZARD’S LAST DAY IN HAMILTON.

IT was fortunate that there was no serious sickness in Hamilton that night, for the new physician was out of town and Dr. Izard inaccessible. Ever since nightfall there had been a rush of people to the latter’s gate, the news having already spread far and wide that the doctor had lately shown signs of mania, during which he had invited the whole town to come to the cemetery the following morning, there to witness, they scarcely knew what, but something strange, something which would turn the public mind against Ephraim Earle, whom he had once before, as all remembered, accused of being an impostor. But they found the gate padlocked, and so were obliged to content themselves with hanging over the cemetery wall and catching what glimpses they could of the doctor’s light which shone clear but inhospitable from his open window. Not till the great clock struck twelve did the curious crowd separate and straggle away to their respective homes.

Meanwhile what was the doctor doing? We, who have penetrated more than once into his silent room, will do it once again and for the last time. We shall not see much. The doctor, whose face shows change, but not so much as one would expect, sits at his table writing. The name of Grace is at the top of the page over which he bends, and the words are few beneath, but they seem to be written with his heart’s blood; for in signing them he gives vent to one irrepressible sob—he the man whose sternly contained soul had awed his fellow-men for years and held all men and women and children back from him, as if his nature lacked sympathy for anything either weak or small. The night was far advanced when he folded this letter, directed it, and laid it face up on his desk. But though he must have been weary, he cast no glance at the settle in the dim corner of the room, but began to arrange his effects, clear his drawers, and put in order his shelves, as if preparing for the curiosity of other eyes than those which had hitherto rested so carelessly upon them.

There was a fire lighted in the stove, and into this he thrust some papers and one or two insignificant objects which it seemed a strong effort to part from. As the blaze leaped up he cringed and partially turned away his head, but soon he was again amongst his belongings, touching some with a loving hand, others with a careless one, till the church clock, striking two, proclaimed that time was passing hurriedly. At this reminder he dropped the book he had taken up and passed to the green door. It was locked, as usual, but he speedily undid the fastenings, and carrying a lamp with him, stepped through the opening and up the spiral staircase. One of the steps creaked as he pressed it, and he sighed as he heard the familiar sound, possibly because he did not expect to hear it again. When in the hall he set down the lamp, but soon took it up again and began visiting the rooms. They had always been well looked after, and were neither unsightly nor neglected in appearance, but they seemed to have a painful significance for him as he looked, lamp in hand, from the open doorways. In this one his mother had stood as a bride, with her young friends around her, most of whom were laid away in the graveyard, which was never long absent from his thoughts. How he had loved to hear her tell about that night, and the dress which she wore, and the compliments she received, and how it was the happiest night of her life, till he came—her little child—to make every night joyful. Ah, if she could have foreseen—if she had lived! But God was good and took her, and he of all his family was left to meet the doomful hour alone. In the room he now entered he had played as a boy, such merry plays, for he was a restless child and had a voice like a bell rung in the sunshine. Was that golden-haired, jovial little being who ran up and down these floors like mad and shouted till the walls rung again, the earnest of himself as he appeared at this hour shuddering in the midnight darkness through the empty spaces of this great house? And this little nook here, the dearest and most sacred of all in his eyes—could he bear to look at it with this crushing weight upon his heart and the prospect of to-morrow looming up in ghostly proportions before him, darkening every spot at which he gazed?

Yes, yes; for here all that there has ever been of sweetness in his miserable life, all that there is of hope in that great world to come, centres and makes a holy air about him. Here _she_ sat one day, one memorable, glorious day, with the sunshine playing on her hair and that sweet surprise in her look which told him more plainly than the faltering yes on her tongue that his presumptuous love was returned, and that life henceforth promised to be a paradise to him. Ah, ah, and he had not been satisfied! He must needs be a great physician too, greater than any of those about him, greater than the great lights of Boston and New York, and so—But away with such thoughts; it is not morning yet and this night shall be given up to sweeter memories and more sacred farewells.

Stooping he knelt where she had sat, and put his hands together as in childhood’s days and prayed, perhaps for the first time in years; prayed as if his mother was overhearing him. Did he pray alone? Was not she praying too in that shabby little room of hers, so unworthy of her beauty and yet so hallowed by her resignation and her love?

Ah, yes, she was praying there to-night, but what would she be doing there to-morrow? He uttered a cry as the thought stung him, and springing passionately to his feet went on and on, avoiding but one place in the whole house and that was where a little door led down to the cellar, at the side of the spiral staircase. When all was done he paused and said his last farewell. Who would walk these lonely halls after he had vanished from them? Upon whom would these mirrors look and in whose hearts would the mystery of this place next impress itself? There was no prophet present to lift the veil, and dropping his chin on his breast the doctor descended the stairs and betook himself again to his desolate den.

The stars were shining brightly over the graveyard as he reseated himself at his desk. There were no signs of advancing morning yet, and he could dream, dream yet that he was young again and that Grace’s voice was in his ear and her tender touch on his arm, and that life was all innocence and hope, and that yon loud resounding clock, too loud for guilty men, rang with some other sound than that of death, doom, and retribution.

Letting his head fall forward in his hands he sat while the dreary hours moved on, but when the clock struck six he raised his forehead and facing the churchyard waited for the first coming streaks of light. And sitting so and waiting so we get our last glimpse of him before the hubbub and turmoil of the day set in, with the curious gaping crowd on the highway and the group among the graves, asking why the doctor had not come out, and why the sexton was the first to appear on the scene, and why he bore a pickaxe and a spade and looked as solemn as if he were going to dig a grave for the dead.

Seven o’clock had not struck, but Ephraim Earle was there, and Clarke and little Polly, crouching in terror behind her mother’s tomb; and a physician was there too, summoned from Wells by Earle, some said, that there might be a competent person on hand to look after the doctor should he prove to be, as more than one person intimated, the madman he appeared; and Dr. Sunderland was there, the good minister; and Mr. Crouse, who had had Polly’s matters in charge, and every one but the true Ephraim Earle, whom the doctor had promised to produce.

But then it was not yet seven and Dr. Izard had said seven; and when the hour did at last strike then every peering eye and straining ear became instantly aware that his door had opened and that he stood on the doorstep cold and silent, but _alone_.

“Where is the true Ephraim Earle you talked about? You promised to bring him here! Let us see him,” shouted a voice, and the whole crowd that was pushing and elbowing its way into the graveyard echoed as with one voice: “Let us see him! let us see him!”

The doctor, perfectly unmoved, stepped down from the threshold and came toward them quietly, but with a strange command in his manner. “I shall keep my word,” said he, and turned to the sexton. “Dig!” he cried, and pointed to a grave at his feet.

“Wretch! madman!” screamed Earle, “would you desecrate my wife’s grave? What do you mean by such a command?”

“You threatened to do this yourself but yesterday,” the doctor returned, “and why do you hesitate to have it done by me?” And he again cried to the hesitating sexton, “Dig!” and the man, understanding nothing, but driven to his work by the doctor’s fierce eye and unfaltering lip, set himself to the task.

“Oh, what is he going to show us? Do not, do not let him go on,” moaned Polly. “I own this man to be my father; why do you let this terror go on before our eyes?”

“This man whom you are ready to own as your father has called me the murderer of his wife,” retorted the doctor. “I can only refute it by showing him the contents of this grave. Go on!” he commanded, with an imperative gesture to the sexton, “or I will take the spade in my own hands.”

“Ah, he has done that once before!” muttered Polly. “He is mad! Do you not see it in his eyes?”

The doctor, whose face had the aspect of marble, but who otherwise was quite like himself in his best and most imposing mood, turned upon Polly as she said this, and smiled as only the broken-hearted can smile when confronted by a pitiful jest.

“Is there a physician here?” he demanded. “Ah, I see Dr. Brotherton. You are in good time, I assure you, doctor. Feel my pulse and lay your hand on my heart, and answer if you think I have my wits about me and know what I say when I declare that only by investigating this grave can the truth be known.”

“I do not need to do either, doctor. I know a sane man when I see him, and I must acknowledge that there are few saner than you.”

A flush for the first time crept into Ephraim Earle’s hardy cheek; he shifted restlessly on his feet, and his eyes fell with something like secret terror upon the hole that was fast widening at his feet.

“I believe you two are in league,” he cried; “but if Dr. Izard can prove himself innocent of the charges I have made against him, why, he is welcome to do so, even at the cost of my most sacred feelings.”

“When you strike the coffin, let me know,” said the doctor to the sexton. At these words a dreadful hush settled over the whole assemblage, in which nothing could be heard but the sound of the spade. Suddenly the sexton, who was by this time deep in the hole he was making, looked up.

“I have reached it,” he said.

The doctor drew in his breath and turned livid for a moment, then he cast a strange look away from them all across the deserted town, and seeming to gather strength from something he saw there, he motioned the sexton to continue, while he said aloud and with steady emphasis:

“This man who confronts you at my side is not Ephraim Earle, because Ephraim Earle lies buried here!” and scarcely waiting for the anxious cries of astonishment evoked by these words to subside, he went rapidly on to say: “Fourteen years ago he died by my hand on this spot and was buried by me in this grave. God forgive me that I have kept this deed a secret from you so long.”

The tumult which took place at this avowal was appalling. Men and women pushed and struggled till the foremost nearly fell into the grave. Polly shrieked and fell back into the arms of Clarke, while he who had been called Earle shrank all at once together and looked like the impostor he was. Dr. Izard alone retained his self-possession, the self-possession of despair.

“Listen,” he now cried, awing that tumultuous mass into silence by the resonant tones of his voice and the gesture which he made toward the now plainly-to-be-seen coffin. “It was not a predetermined murder. I was young, ambitious, absorbed in my profession and eager to distinguish myself. His wife’s case was a strange one. It baffled me; it baffled others. I could see no reason for the symptoms she showed, nor for the death she died. You know the truth; to sound the difficulty and make myself strong against another such a case was but the natural wish of so young and ambitious a man; but when I asked Ephraim for the privilege of an autopsy he denied it to me with words that stung and inflamed me till what had been a natural instinct became an overmastering passion, and I determined that I would know the truth concerning her complaint if I had to resort to illegal and perhaps unjustifiable means. Her grave—you are standing by it—was made near, very near my office, and when the mound was cleared and the mourners had departed, my way looked so plain before me that I do not think I so much as hesitated at the decision I had formed, dreadful as it may seem to you now. When midnight came,—and it was a dismal night, the blackest of the year,—I stole out into this spot and began my unhallowed work. I had no light, but I needed none, and strange as it may seem, I reached the coffin-lid in an hour, and stooping down began to wrench it open, when suddenly I heard a step, then a murmur and then a short, fierce cry. The husband had suspected me and was there to guard his dead.

“Leaping from the grave, I confronted him and a short, wild struggle ensued. He had thrown himself upon me in anger, and I, with the natural instinct of self-preservation, raised my spade and struck him, how surely I did not know at the moment. But when silence followed the struggle and a heavy fall shook the ground at my feet, I began to realize what I had done, and throwing myself upon the prostrate body, I laid my hand upon the heart and my cheek to the fast-chilling lips. No action in the one, no breath upon the other; Ephraim Earle was dead, and I, his murderer, stood with his body at my feet beside his wife’s wide-opened grave.

“I had never known terror till that hour, but as I rose to my feet, comprehending as it were in an instant all that lay before me if his dead body was found at my door, the subtleness of the criminal entered into me, and springing back into the grave I tore poor Huldah’s corpse from its last resting place, thrust her husband’s scarce cold body into her coffin, and pushed down the lid. Then I shovelled in the earth, and when all was done, I carried her poor remains into the house and buried them beneath the cellar floor, where they are still lying. And now you know my crime and now you know my punishment. Three months ago this man came into town and announced himself as Ephraim Earle, and marking the havoc he has made with the happiness of our innocent Polly, I have felt myself driven step by step to make this dreadful avowal. Now look into this grave for yourselves, and see if all that I have told you is not true.”

And they did look, and though I need not tell you what they saw, there was no more talk in Hamilton of any lack of sanity on Dr. Izard’s part, nor did any man or woman there-after speak again of the adventurer by the name of Ephraim Earle.

When the first horror was over and people could look about them once more, the doctor’s voice was heard for the last time.

“When this man—who, as you see, would like to escape from this place, but cannot—came with his bravado into town, I told Polly that before she accepted his assertions as true, she should exact from him some irrefutable proof of his identity, and mentioned the medal that had been given to her father by the French government. This was because the medal had not been found after his disappearance, and I thought it must have been upon his person when he was thrust into the grave. But to my horror and amazement, this fellow was able to produce it,—where found or how discovered by him I cannot tell. But he has never given evidence of having the money which accompanied the medal. Search, then, my friends, and see if it cannot be found among this dust, and if it can, give it to Polly, whom I have in vain endeavored to recompense for this loss, which was involuntary on my part and which has always been to me the most unendurable feature of my crime.”

A cry of surprise, a shout of almost incredulous joy, followed this suggestion, and Mr. Crouse held up to sight a discolored, almost indistinguishable pocketbook, which some one had the courage to pull out of the coffin. Then another voice, more solemn and methodical than any which had yet spoken, called out: “Let us kneel and give thanks to God, who remembers the fatherless and restores to the orphan her rightful patrimony.”

But another voice, shriller and more imperative still, put a stop to this act of devotion.

“Dr. Izard has confessed his sins, and now let the impostor confess his. Who are you, man, and how happens it that you know all our ways and the whole history of this town?” And Lawyer Crouse shook the would-be Earle by the arm and would not let him go till he answered.

“I am—” the old bravado came back, and the fellow for a moment looked quite reckless and handsome. “Ask Tilly Unwin who I am,” he suddenly shouted, breaking into a great laugh. “Don’t you remember Bill Prescott, all you graybeards? You used to hustle with me once for a chance at her side at singing school and dance; but you won’t hustle any longer, I am ready to swear; the lady’s beauty is not what it was.” And with this unseemly jest he whirled about on one heel and gave his arm to a slim, light-complexion young man whom few had noticed, but who at no time had stepped far away from his side.

The cry of “Phil! It is Phil, the scape-grace who was said to be dead a dozen years ago,” followed him out of the yard; but he heeded nobody, his game was over, and his last card, a black one, had been played.

And Dr. Izard? When they thought of him again, he was gone; whither, no one knew, nor did it enter into the heart of any one there to follow him. One person, a heavily draped woman, who had not entered the graveyard, but who had stood far down the street during all that dreadful hour, thought she saw his slight form pass between her and the dismal banks of the river; but she never rightly knew, for in her mind’s eye he was always before her, and this vision of his bowed head and shrunken form may have been, like the rest, a phantom of her own creation.

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● Transcriber’s note:

○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.

○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.