He hurried on his clothes and stole quietly from the house, for it was hardly broad daylight, and no one, not even a servant, yet astir.
An hour later a farmer driving into the town with a load of produce for the market found him lying dead by the roadside, foully murdered; the assassins had done their work thoroughly this time, and life was utterly extinct.
The news flew like lightning, not through Fairfield only, but to the neighboring towns and all up and down the valley, being telegraphed from point to point.
It caused great excitement, and increased the feeling of hot indignation against the leader of the gang, by whose orders, as almost every one believed, this second and successful attempt had been made upon the old man’s life; and also the unpopularity of Bangs, who was to defend him on the approaching trial.
Besides that, it set men to discussing the justice and righteousness of the law of the State, which ran counter to that law of God, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.”
The large majority felt and said that the death penalty was the only adequate punishment that could be inflicted upon O’Rourke and his confederates, who had finally accomplished the deed of blood attempted by him, and them under his leadership.
Miriam heard the news with a thrill of horror. “Had Bangs had anything to do with the instigation of the atrocious crime?” she asked herself; “might he not be wicked enough to connive at such a deed, that thus the principal witness against his client should be prevented from testifying at the trial?”
She shuddered at the thought, but could not banish it, and when, a few days later, he called to once more press his suit, she shrank from him in undisguised aversion.
It roused him to fury, which he vainly endeavored to hide under an appearance of lover-like devotion. He had come to her in no amiable mood, for ever since the news of Himes’s death had reached Prairieville his fellow-townsmen had treated him to nothing but looks of coldness, scorn, and contempt. No one meeting him on the street or in the haunts of business had a word of cordial greeting for him; each passed him by with scarcely a nod of recognition, and their glances spoke only disapproval and suspicion. It maddened him; all the more because his conscience was not clear; and he had been on the verge of a violent quarrel several times during the day.
It was about the middle of the afternoon when he reached Lakeside, and found Miriam alone in the shaded porch, resting and reading after many hours of close attention to affairs indoors and out.