CHAPTER XVI.
WHEN A MAN HATES.
Rapid thoughts were revolving in his mind:
“I will take her far away from New York, my precious daughter, and her mother shall never know that she is not lying in the old vault among her dead-and-gone kindred, the proud Van Dorns. The rest of her sweet life shall belong to the plebian father her mother despised.”
Suddenly he remembered the old sexton lying, as he supposed, in a heavy swoon on the floor of the vault.
“Can I purchase his silence?” he wondered, laying Jessie’s quiet form down on the dry grass while he returned to the vault.
It gave him a shock to find that the old man was quite dead, but directly he began to perceive that the sudden death would help his plans materially.
“Poor old man, I am very sorry about it, but it makes my secret safe. Now, I will lay him with the lantern and the vault keys some distance away in one of the paths, so that when he is found in the morning no one will suspect what has happened here,” he thought, as he lifted the frame of the old man and bore it some distance away, placing beside it the lantern and keys as if he had fallen dead on the spot.
“God rest his soul!” he murmured, bending over the still form and placing in his inner coat pocket a sum of money more than sufficient to defray his burial expenses.
“For who knows but he may have left a widow and orphans who will mourn bitterly to-morrow when he is found here dead,” he thought, with a sigh, as he turned from the spot, returning to Jessie, who lay faintly breathing, but not yet fully conscious, on the grass.
“Now to get safely away from here before she awakes and realizes the horror of her position,” he muttered, fastening the long overcoat tightly around her to conceal her white robes as he bore her in his arms out of the beautiful cemetery, past glimmering statues marking the last repose of world-worn hearts.