“Be calm, Frank: I made inquiries myself at the island registry-office. The clerk told me this story, but said that the woman who had charge of the dead asserted that the grave was opened, and it was ascertained that absolute death had taken place.
“Alas!” said Frank, in a voice of despair, “I saw that woman—the keeper of the dead-house—the grave-digger’s wife. She told me this story, but it was with a troubled eye. I swore vengeance on her unless she told me the truth. She was alarmed, and said she would reveal all she knew if I swore to keep it to myself. I swore it. Can you bear to hear it, Louis?”
“Speak!”
“She said only this: ‘When the grave was opened it was found that Edith Brandon had not been dead when she was buried.’”
Louis groaned, and, falling forward, buried his head in both his hands.
It was a long time before either of them spoke. At last Louis, without lifting his head, said:
“Go on.”
“When I left the island I went to Quebec, but could not stay there. It was too near the place of horror. I went up the river, working my way as a laborer, to Montreal. I then sought for work, and obtained employment as porter in a warehouse. What mattered it? What was rank or station to me? I only wanted to keep myself from starvation and get a bed to sleep on at night.
“I had no hope or thought of any thing. The horrors through which I had passed were enough to fill my mind. Yet above them all one horror was predominant, and never through the days and nights that have since elapsed has my soul ceased to quiver at the echo of two terrible words which have never ceased to ring through my brain—‘Buried alive!’
“I lived on in Montreal, under an assumed name, as a common porter, and might have been living there yet; but one day as I came in I heard the name of ‘Brandon.’ Two of the clerks who were discussing the news in the morning paper happened to speak of an advertisement which had long been in the papers in all parts of Canada. It was for information about the Brandon family.