“How sad; died of a broken heart, I suppose,” was Helen’s next remark.
Craig moved uneasily, wondering what Mark would reply, and wholly unprepared for his quick answer, “Died of a broken neck! She was hung!”
Helen gave a little screech and fell back against the cushioned seat, while Alice turned pale with wonder and surprise.
“That’s my pedigree,—my heredity,” Mark went on, with a certain defiance in his voice. “Mr. Taylor will tell you all about it, if you ask him. It is his crack story; but remember I had nothing to do with it.”
He turned and looked at Helen, who met his look with tears in her eyes.
“I am so sorry,” she said, very softly, and the words and the tears compensated for the shame Mark had felt when he avowed his ancestry.
“I am glad I was the first to tell it,” he thought, as he told the horses to go on.
Not another word was spoken till the hotel was reached; then, as Mark helped Helen out, she said to him again, “I am sorry I gave you pain.”
“And I am glad you did,” was his answer.
They found Uncle Zach in the depths of humiliation and remorse. He had confessed to Dot the affair with the safe and received so severe a castigation from her tongue that he had crept up to the garret and looked at “Taylor’s Tavern” and Johnny’s blanket, and the envelope with Zacheus Taylor Esq. on it and had sat a long time on the trunk wondering if he were a fool, with no more judgment than a child, as Dot said he was.