“I stepped softly for fear of disturbing your father. Do you see that outraged relic? The old creature’s self-accusation turned upon it—upon that and nothing else.”
“What do you mean?”
“That you must look elsewhere, I am afraid, for the criminal. Our pleasant Rottengoose shared the gross superstitions of her kind. All these years she has secretly hugged the really reprehensible thought that the boy’s death was due to her.”
“I don’t understand.”
“A base superstition, my friend—a very base superstition. She had in her possession, I understand, a flint shaft of the paleolithic period. There are plenty such to be picked up in the neighborhood. The ignorant call them elf arrowheads and cherish a belief that to mutilate with one of them a body’s portrait or image is to compass that person’s destruction. This harridan cherished no love for your brother, and fancied she saw her opportunity of seizing revenge without risk on a certain night of misfortune. The boy died and henceforth she knew herself as his murderess. Good-morning to you. May I remind you that my fee is yet unpaid? I will certify to the present cause of death, with pleasure.”
CHAPTER LV.
A SHADOW FROM THE PAST.
Like one in a dream I heard the doctor’s footstep recede down the stairs and heard the yard door close dully on him as he left the house. In my suffering soul I felt one cruel shaft rankling, and for the rest only a vague sense of loss hung like a cloud over all my faculties.
I had no doubt of the truth of the evil creature’s words. Not otherwise could his knowledge and possession of the tattered portrait be accounted for. Now, too, Peggy’s unaccountable terror at my discovery of her chaunting and gloating over her work on a certain afternoon recurred to me, and was confirmation irrefragable. The wretched old woman had had all the will and intention; but she was innocent of the deed.
I must look elsewhere, as he had said—begin all over again. True—but now less than ever in my father’s direction. Had I needed in my heart convincing proof of the old man’s guiltlessness, his manner in accepting his acquittal would have afforded it. By this he had shown that with him, as with the hounds that had sought to pull him down, his guilt was purely conjectural—presumed merely on the circumstantial evidence of the braces found in his pocket. But I judged him in my heart and pronounced him acquitted.
Now it was idle to moan over my impetuous rush to conclusions. I must only guard against permitting the disillusion to vex the few last days that remained to him. If I wronged the old dead housewife thereby, it was in degree only, for morally she was as guilty as if her charm had borne all the evil force she attributed to it.