If people still speculate upon how the body of the murdered man has been disposed of, there is no speculation as to who was his murderer, or how the latter made escape.
The treason of the jail-keeper explains this—itself accounted for by Ephraim Darke having on the previous day paid a visit to his son in the cell, and left with him a key that ere now has opened many a prison door. Joe Harkness, a weak-witted fellow, long suspected of faithlessness, was not the man to resist the temptation with which his palm had been touched.
Since that day some changes have taken place in the settlement. The plantation late Armstrong’s has passed into the hands of a new proprietor—Darke having disposed of it—while the cottage of the Clancys, now ownerless, stays untenanted. Unfurnished too: for the bailiff has been there, and a bill of sale, which covered its scant plenishing, farm-stock, implements and utensils, has swept all away.
For a single day there was a stir about the place, with noise corresponding, when the chattels were being disposed of by public auction. Then the household gods of the decayed Irish gentleman were knocked down to the highest bidder, and scattered throughout the district. Rare books, pictures, and other articles, telling of refined taste, with some slight remnants of bijouterie, were carried off to log-cabins, there to be esteemed in proportion to the prices paid for them. In fine, the Clancy cottage, stripped of everything, has been left untenanted. Lone as to the situation in which it stands, it is yet lonelier in its desolation. Even the dog, that did such service in pointing out the criminality of him who caused all the ruin, no longer guards its enclosures, or cheers them with his familiar bark. The faithful animal, adopted by Simeon Woodley, has found a home in the cabin of the hunter.
It is midnight; an hour still and voiceless in Northern climes, but not so in the Southern. Far from it in the State of Mississippi. There the sun’s excessive heat keeps Nature alert and alive, even at night, and in days of December.
Though night, it is not December, but a date nearer Spring. February is written on the heading of letters, and this, a Spring month on the Lower Mississippi, has commenced making its imprint on the forest trees. Their buds have already burst, some showing leaves fully expanded, others of still earlier habit bedecked with blossoms. Birds, too, awaking from a short winter’s silence, pour forth their amorous lays, filling glade and grove with music, that does not end with the day; for the mock-bird, taking up the strain, carries it on through the hours of night; so well counterfeiting the notes of his fellow-songsters, one might fancy them awake—still singing.
Not so melodious are other voices disturbing the stillness of the Southern night. Quite the opposite are the croaking of frogs, the screeching of owls, the jerking call of tree-crickets, and the bellowing of the alligator. Still, the ear accustomed to such sounds is not jarred by them. They are but the bass notes, needed to complete the symphony of Nature’s concert.
In the midst of this mélange,—the hour, as already stated, midnight—a man, or something bearing man’s semblance, is seen gliding along the edge of the cypress swamp, not far from the place where Charles Clancy fell.
After skirting the mud-flat for a time, the figure—whether ghost or human—turns face toward the tract of lighter woodland, extending between the thick timber and cleared ground of the plantations.
Having traversed this, the nocturnal wayfarer comes within sight of the deserted cottage, late occupied by the Clancys.