Cruel as the grave

by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

At daybreak the next morning they arose and breakfasted, and resumed their journey.

Lyon Berners again consulted his map of the State and his pocket compass, and laid out his road. It lay for all that day up and down, in and out, among the wildest passes of the Allegheny Mountains. At noon they stopped for an hour, to rest and refresh themselves and their horses, and then again went forward. At night they reached another hamlet at the foot of the mountain range. They put up at this hamlet, which was called Dunville, and which boasted one tavern kept by an old Revolutionary pensioner called Purley.

Here also Lyon Berners gave his name as Howe, and here again he and his wife were destined to be told all about the murder.

“You see, sir, a little below us there, on the other side of the mountain, they do say as the murder was done by the woman’s husband, as she had run away from; but they are a set of poor ignorant folks out there! Now it stand to reason, sir, it couldn’t have been done by him, and it must have been done by some member of that band of burglars that they say is lurking somewhere there-a-way by Black Hall.”

“Band of burglars!” echoed Farmer Howe, in astonishment. And he was almost about to betray himself by saying that there could be no such band there, when he recollected his position, and held his tongue.

Farmer Howe and his daughter spent a refreshing night at old Purley’s tavern at Dunville, and at daybreak next morning, after a very early breakfast, they resumed their journey.

And again, as usual, Lyon Berners consulted his map and his compass. He now found that his most direct route lay through a thick forest, between two mountain ridges.

They travelled all the morning, and as usual stopped at noon for rest and food for themselves and their four-footed friends. In the afternoon they set forth again, and travelled until they reached Iceville, a considerable village situated high upon one of the table-lands of the Blue Ridge. In this town there were three taverns. Farmer Howe and his daughter put up at the most humble of the trio. And here too the talk of the hour was the homicide at Black Hall.

“They say about here that it was one of the lady’s admirers who killed her in a fit of desperation from love and jealousy; for the lady was well beknown to be a great coquette,” said one village authority to another, in the presence of Farmer Howe.

When our travellers found themselves alone that night, in one of the two small adjoining rooms that had been assigned to them, Lyon Berners turned to Sybil, and said;