“Murder and lynching. Bangs shot Barney Nolan down dead in the street without the slightest excuse for it, except that he was in a towering passion about something—nobody knows what—and—”
“Was lynched for it?” queried McAllister, as the captain paused in his story.
“Yes; he did not live many minutes after the mob got hold of him.”
Hardly conscious why he did so, Charlton glanced at Miriam with the last words; their eyes met, and he saw a look of keenest anguish come into hers, a deathly pallor suddenly overspread her features.
The pang that sight caused him was sharp as a dagger’s thrust. “Could it be possible that she cared for Bangs? a man so utterly devoid of principle or honor, so hot-tempered, wicked, and cruel? that she could have cherished a feeling of love for one so base, so utterly unworthy of her?” The idea seemed preposterous; yet what else could explain her strong emotion on hearing of his death?
The others, occupied with what he was saying, did not notice Miriam’s emotion.
“Lynched! what does that mean?” asked Bertie, in wide-eyed wonder.
“Never mind, dear,” said his grandmother, rising in some haste and leading him and Olive away; “children can’t understand these things. It’s all over now, and we’ll think and talk of something else.”
“Yes; Mrs. Heath is right,” Charlton observed, in a low voice; “and the details are sickening; hardly fit for any but men’s ears.”
At that Miriam also rose and went quietly away to seek again the privacy of her own room. Closing the door, she threw herself face down upon the bed, pressing both hands upon her temples. Her brain was in a whirl of contending emotions, in which, for the moment, a feeling as if she were partly responsible for Bangs’s awful end was uppermost.