Andrew was not dissipated, but was fond of pranks, and so restive under his father's positive hand that he twice ran away to distant seaports, and thus incurred a remarkable amount of intuitive gossip, such as belongs to all old settled suburban societies. This occasional firmness of character in the midst of a generally light and flexible life, now told against him in the public mind. "He has nerve enough to do anything desperate in a pinch," exclaimed the very wisest. "Didn't William Zane find him out once in the island of Barbadoes grubbing sugar-cane with a hoe, and the thermometer at 120 in the shade? And didn't he swear he'd stay there and die unless concessions were made to him, and certain things never brought up again? Didn't even his iron-shod father have to give way before he would come home? Ah! Andrew is light-hearted, but he is an Indian in self-will!"
To-night Agnes was in the deepest grief. Upon her, and only her, fell the whole burden of this double crime and mystery, ten times more terrible that her lover was compromised and had disappeared.
"Go to bed, Podge!" said Agnes, as the clock in the engine-house struck midnight. "Oblige me, my dear! I cannot sleep, and shall wait and watch. Perhaps Andrew will be here."
"I can't leave you up, Aggy, and with that thing so near." She locked toward the front parlor, where, behind the folding-doors, lay the dead.
"I have no fear of that. He was always kind to me. My fears are all in this world. O darling!"
She burst into sobs. Her friend kissed her again and again, and knew that feelings between love and crime extorted that last word.
"Aggy," spoke the light-hearted girl, "I know that you cannot help loving him, and as long as he is loved by you I sha'n't believe him guilty. Must I really leave you here?"
Her weeping friend turned up her face to give the mandatory kiss, and Podge was gone.
Agnes sat in solitude, with her hands folded and her heart filled with unutterable tender woe, that so much causeless cloud had settled upon the home of her refuge. She could not experience that relief many of us feel in deep adversity, that it is all illusion, and will in a moment float away like other dreams. Brought to this house an orphan, and twice deprived of a mother's love, she had only entered woman's estate when another class of cares beset her. Her beauty and sweetness of disposition had brought her more lovers than could make her happy. There was but one on whom she could confer her heart, and this natural choice had drawn around her the perils which now overwhelmed them all. Accepting the son, she incurred the father's resentment upon both; for he, the dead man yonder, had also been her lover.
"Oh, my God!" exclaimed the anguished woman, kneeling by her chair and laying her cheek upon it, while only such tears as we shed in supreme moments saturated her handkerchief, "what have I done to make such misery to others? How sinful I must be to set son and father against each other! Yet, Heavenly Father, I can but love!"