For a little time Mellen stood almost as still and helpless as herself. Suddenly, in a voice that sounded scarcely human, he turned upon this man.
"Take up the spade, and finish your work!"
With something between a laugh and an oath, North snatched the spade, plunged it into the grave, and pressed all his force upon it. Slowly the edge of a box appeared. That evil man seemed to triumph in his gloomy work: placed one foot on the handle of the spade to hold it firmly, bent down and dragged the box into the moonlight.
Pulling the spade up from the crumbling earth, he raised it on high, and was about to dash the box open. Elizabeth lifted her hands in mute appeal.
She hoped nothing from her husband's forbearance. The action was only an instinct of her whirling senses, such as makes a drowning man clutch at straws; but with it her limbs gave way, and she fell upon her knees by the box, still lifting her white face to that stem, determined countenance.
"Do you think to oppose me even now?" he exclaimed. "I wonder I do not kill you. Ask this man, this double dyed villain to dig deeper his pit, which has concealed your infamy, and bury you there alive,—that would be a mercy to us both."
"If you would only kill me," she moaned, "only kill me."
"Stand up," he cried again; "stand up, I say."
But she stretched out her hands over the box; some insane idea of still preserving it from his touch, rushed across her mind.
"Open it," he said, turning fiercely on North; "I will look on this dishonor with my own eyes."