Bessie's Fortune: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

"A murderer!" dropped from Burton Jerrold's pale lips; and "A murderer!" was echoed in the next room by lips far whiter than Burton Jerrold's, and which quivered with mortal pain as the boy Grey started from his stooping position over the stove and felt that he was dying.

For Grey was there, and had been for the last few minutes, and had heard the secret which he was not to know.

After his father left Grey's Park, he had sat a few minutes with his mother and aunt, and then, complaining of a headache, had asked to be excused, and gone to his room, which was at the head of some stairs leading down into a narrow hall and out into the side yard. When the boy entered his chamber, he had no intention of going to the farm-house, but as he thought of his grandfather dying, and that to-morrow might perhaps be too late to see him alive, the wish to go there grew stronger and stronger, until it became an impulse which he could not resist.

"Something tells me I must go," he said; "that it is needful for me to be there, and go I shall. I am not afraid of the snow. It cannot be more than a foot on the level. I have waded through more banks than that, and it is only a mile from here across the fields and through the woods. I shall not tell any one, but I am going."

And in a few moments Grey had descended the stairs, and unlocking the outer door, locked it again, and putting the key in his pocket, started for the farm-house, striking into a cross-road which led across the fields, and which in summer he used often to take in preference to the highway. It was a little nearer, and led through grassy lanes, and cool pinewoods, and pleasant pasture lands, across a stream where he had once built a dam, and had a little water-wheel which his grandfather made for him.

The way, however, was anything but pleasant now, with the cold, dark sky, the tall, leafless trees, and the drifting snow, which he found was more than a foot deep on the level, except in the woods, where it had not fallen so thickly. But Grey was young and fearless, and he went on rapidly, until he reached the knoll from which the house was visible not far away. It had ceased snowing by this time, and the moon, which was nearly at its full, was struggling to show itself through a rift in the gray clouds. The wind, however, was still blowing in wild gusts, and as it swept past him he, too, fancied it had in it a human sound.

"It is like Aunt Hannah's voice calling to me. I am glad I came, though I suppose father will scold," he said, as he paused a moment to rest, and then rapidly descended the knoll to the house.

Entering by the wood-shed door, which was first reached, he went into the summer kitchen, and passed on into the second kitchen, where a candle was burning dimly, and where he stopped a moment by the warm stove. No one heard him, no one knew he was there; but as he stood in the silence and darkness he heard distinctly his grandfather's voice, and this was what he heard:

"I must tell you, my son, and you, my minister; but no one else, not Grey—no, no, not, the boy Grey, who loves me so much. His life must not be shadowed with disgrace. He must not hate me in my coffin. Oh, Grey! Grey! May God bless him and give him every needful happiness, and make him so good and noble that his life will blot out the stain upon our name."

Here Grey, who stood motionless, heard his father say: