When she sat down at the table with her father and brothers, all of them except Richard and Louis stared at her with open amazement and questioned her. Richard and Louis stared furtively at their sister's face, as stiff, set, and pale as if she were dead, but they asked no questions. Madelon said, in a voice that was not hers, that she was not sick, and put pieces of Indian cake into her untasting mouth and listened. But breakfast was well over and the dishes put away before anybody came. And then it was not the sheriff to hale her to prison on a charge of murder, but an old man from the village big with news.
He was a relative of the Hautvilles, an uncle on the mother's side, old and broken, scarcely able to find his feeble way on his shrunken legs through the snow; but, with the instinct of gossip, the sharp nose for his neighbors' affairs, still alert in him, he had arisen at dawn to canvass the village, and had come thither at first, since he anticipated that he might possibly have the delight of bringing the intelligence before any of the family had heard it elsewhere. He came in, dragging his old, snow-laden feet, tapping heavily with his stout stick, and settled, cackling, into a chair.
“Heard the news?” queried Uncle Luke basset, his eyes, like black sparks, twinkling rapidly at all their faces.
Madelon set the cups and saucers on the dresser.
“We don't have any time for anybody's business but our own,” quoth David Hautville, gruffly. He did not like his wife's uncle. He was tightening a string in his bass-viol; he pulled it as he spoke, and it gave out a fierce twang. Louis sat moodily over the fire with his painful arm in wet bandages. Richard was whittling kindling-wood, with nervous speed, beside him. Eugene and Abner were cleaning their guns. They all looked at the eager old man except Richard and Louis and Madelon.
“Burr Gordon has killed Lot so's to get his property,” proclaimed the old man, and his voice broke with eager delight and importance.
Madelon gave a cry and sprang forward in front of him. “It's a lie!” she shouted.
The old man laughed in her face. “No, 'tain't, Madelon. You're showin' a Christian sperrit to stan' up for him when he's jilted ye for another gal, but 'tain't a lie. His knife, with his name on to it, was a-stickin' out of Lot's side.”
“It's a lie! I killed him with my brother Richard's knife!”
The old man shrank back before her in incredulous horror. The great bass-viol fell to the ground like a woman as David strode forward and Abner and Eugene turned their shocked, white faces from their guns.