He pointed to the face of Alice.
Herman, ashy pale, and shaking in every limb, followed the movement of Arthur's hand, but did not utter a word.
"A 'man of your cloth' to be 'suspected'—eh, my friend?" and Arthur, laughed. "A minister of THE Church, to be suspected of seduction and of murder? Is it not a lying tongue that dare charge you, Reverend sir, with such crimes?"
Here, poor Alice, writhing in the bed, spoke a faint word about father, and home.
Barnhurst, cringing against the wall, his smooth complexion changed to a livid paleness, muttered an incoherent word about "reparation."
"Oh, you shall make reparation,—never fear; you shall make reparation," whispered Dermoyne, his eyes fairly blazing with light. "And you visited her father's house as a minister of God. She heard you preach in the church, and you talked to her in her home. What words you said, I know not; but some forty-eight hours ago you took her from her home; but a few hours have passed since then. The father lies a mangled corpse somewhere between this house and Philadelphia; and Alice, the daughter, is before you. Are you not proud of your work, my reverend friend?"
Herman's eye glanced from the ominous face of Dermoyne, and then to the iron bar which he held in his clenched hand,—
"You will not—kill—me?" he gasped.
Arthur was silent. The veins upon his forehead were swollen; his teeth were locked; his eyes, deep sunken under his down-drawn brows, emitted a steady and sinister light. He was thinking.
"Kill you?" he said, in a measured voice, which seemed torn, word by word, through his clenched teeth, from his heart. "Oh, if I could believe your creed—that eternal vengeance is the only future punishment for earthly crimes—why, I would kill you, before you could utter another word. Do you believe that creed? No—wretch! you do not. You have but preached it as a part of that machinery which manufactures your salary. But now, wretch! as you stand by the death-bed of your victim, with the face of her avenger before you, now search your heart, and answer me—Do you not begin to feel that there is a God?"