“To see you, Mirry,” added Ronald, roguishly. “I presume he wishes a private interview. Let me beg of you to treat him well for my sake. Just think what a friend he has been to me!”
“He comes on this business of the will, I presume,” returned Miriam, blushing, “and I shall want you and grandmother to be present.”
“Then I’ll ask him into the sitting-room,” Ronald said, giving her a smiling, mischievous look as he hastened away to receive his friend.
Charlton did not ask for a private interview, or seem to have come upon any other errand than the matter of the will. What he had to say was said in the presence of Mrs. Heath and Ronald.
He told them there was apparently nothing in the way of Miriam’s taking immediate possession of the property. It was possible the widow might come forward to put in a claim to her thirds, but not probable, as she was doubtless keeping herself in concealment for fear of being put upon her trial on a charge of complicity in the first attempt upon the old man’s life, he having many times strongly asserted that she was guilty.
“And,” added Charlton, “there is no doubt that she was an old flame of the would-be murderer, Phelim O’Rourke, or that they were often together when the old husband was absent from home.”
“What news do you bring us from town this morning?” asked Ronald. “What has been done with Bangs’s body?”
“Wiley, his brother-in-law, had it taken down last night and buried as privately as possible, lest there should be some interference on the part of the lynchers; though I do not, myself, think he need have had any such apprehension, they being fully satisfied, I have no doubt, with having inflicted the death penalty for his crimes.”
“Do you approve of capital punishment, captain?” asked Mrs. Heath.
“Yes, madam, I do,” he said, emphatically; “first, because God commands it—‘Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed’—and, secondly, because its abolition gives encouragement to those inclined to commit murder—from enmity or for gain—and leads to lynching in cases where the indignation of the community is so aroused by the enormity of a crime, or a series of crimes, that they feel that the criminal must be sent where he can no longer harm his fellows, and that nothing short of the death penalty is an adequate reward for his misdeeds.”