"Oh, William! my darling," she exclaimed, "has he murdered you?"
As she thus spoke she sat down upon the floor of the veranda, and lifting his head into her lap kissed him, her fair hair hanging in dishevelled masses as she did so.
Barton, however, was too far gone to respond by word, but Luella could see by the light of the moon, that cast its flickering rays on the scene, a look of joy for a moment illumine his eye and then pass away forever: for William Barton was dead.
Luella Sealy was taken to her room that night a raving maniac. The sight of any member of her family made her furious; and she accused them in the fiercest tones of murdering her darling William. After awhile she became more calm, seeming to be quietly slumbering, and, under the circumstances, they thought it would be safe to leave her for a short time. Her father, acting upon this idea, left her alone for a few moments while he went to call his daughter-in-law to come and remain with her; but when he returned to her room she was gone. In a moment all was excitement, and every part of the house was searched, but she could not be found. As, however, they ran round the varanda they found her under the window, on the spot where William Barton had been murdered, lying cold and dead, with a ghastly gash in her neck, and her white garments dyed red with her life-blood. A razor, the instrument with which she had accomplished her self-destruction, was clutched, with the grip of death, in her red right hand.
Ginsling was tried for the murder of Barton; but as John, jun., swore the latter was about to enter the house to attack him, and, therefore, the shot was fired in self-defense, he got off with a short imprisonment. But after leaving the jail he found that it would be neither agreeable nor safe for him to reside longer in Bayton, as almost all of the inhabitants shunned him, and the friends of Barton vowed vengeance against him. He accordingly left to reside in the town of M——. He did not live long after leaving Bayton. He went down to the quay one night, when he was, as usual, so intoxicated as to have a very unsteady gait. Unheeding the warnings of a companion he would venture too near the edge; a sudden gust of wind came, he was carried off his equilibrium and fell into the lake. His companion did all he could to save him, but as there was a storm raging at the time, his efforts were unavailing. He said Ginsling's bloated face appeared for a moment in the hollow of the waves, and with an agonizing tone he cried to God to save him; then a huge wave, more mighty than its fellows, engulfed him, and he sank in life to rise no more. A few days after his corpse was found floating upon the water. "Accidentally drowned" was the verdict at the inquest, and he was buried in a nameless grave, with no loved one or friend to drop a tear on his last resting-place.
Mr. and Mrs. Sealy were completely prostrated by what had transpired, and retired from active life to hide their sorrows from the world; they are, I believe, so living at the present time.
John, jun., soon vacated the house by the bay, some of the more ignorant saying he did so because it was haunted by the ghosts of William Barton and Luella Sealy. The house is now standing idle, and is known to the children of the neighborhood as the "haunted house," and many say that, in the night, two white figures are seen walking on the verandah, and that frequently the stillness is broken by the sound of a pistol, and the agonizing shrieks of a woman in the anguish of a terrible fear.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
SOME OF THE CHARACTERS WHO HELPED THE REPEAL—A HOODLUM'S VICTORY.
We have only given the reader one or two of the more prominent of the tragic events which transpired after the passing of the Dunkin Act, but a volume of ten thousand pages would fail to tell of the suffering that was endured in hundreds of homes, by wives and mothers and little helpless children; or how far the wave of evil extended that was set in motion by the antis.