"Rover forgives and pities me. I will take it as a token that God will do so, too; and now we must finish our work."
As if endued with superhuman strength, Hannah helped her father carry the body to the grave he had dug, and there they buried it, while her tears fell like rain, and her father's lips moved with the words:
"Forgive, forgive; I did not mean to kill him."
Everything belonging to the peddler was buried with him, except a leathern bag in which was the gold he had counted in the evening, and a small tin box fastened by a padlock, the key of which was found in his pocket, and his silver watch, which Hannah laid aside with a thought of the sister Elizabeth, whom he had mentioned with so much affection, and who, he said, was to be his heir. The money and the watch belonged to her and must be kept sacredly until the day when Hannah could safely give them to her, as she fully meant to do. For the rest there was nothing of any value, and they buried it with him, and filled the grave, or rather the father filled it, while Hannah held the light, and Rover looked on curiously.
Then, when all was done, when the floor was nailed down securely, the bed moved back to its place, the blood-stains washed from the kitchen floor, and there was nothing left to indicate the awful tragedy which had been enacted there, the father and daughter sat down with Rover lying between them, and talked as to how they would face it.
CHAPTER XIII.
FACING IT.
On the table beside them lay the watch, the leathern bag, and the box which had belonged to the deceased. In the bag there were several hundred dollars in twenty, ten, and five dollar gold pieces, and in the box, which Hannah unlocked, there were some papers, and tied together with a faded ribbon was a lock of dark brown hair, a bit of purple heather, a few English violets, and some leaves of ivy; while on the paper in which they were wrapped was the date of a summer day, many, many years ago, when the dead man was young. Whatever might have been the romance of which this souvenir was the sign, it was buried forever with the past, and Hannah put it back in the box as carefully and tenderly as if it were the hand of the woman on whose head that brown tress once grew.
The next thing which met the view was a picture painted on ivory of a young girl who might have been sixteen or eighteen years of age, and whose face was so beautiful that Hannah uttered an exclamation of surprise as she held it to the light and examined it closely.