"Our hearty appreciation and faithful friendship shall unfailingly pay the interest, at least," added the banker cordially.
Mr. Shelton's fine features beamed with pride and joy. He felt a pardonable elation at the wonders his skill and patience had accomplished.
He felt within himself the proud consciousness that his indefatigable perseverance had nobly earned his success.
Within a few weeks he had the pleasure of seeing Doctor Pratt and Harold Colville sentenced to the penitentiary for a long term of years, and Doctor Heath also was duly punished for his wickedness.
The testimony of Lily Lawrence and Fanny Colville filled the thronged court-room with horror on the day of the trial.
Everyone felt that lynching would not be too bad for such villains; but the sentence of the court was duly carried out, and the wretches were incarcerated in the penitentiary.
Doctor Pratt served out his sentence faithfully. When it was ended he left the shores of America for a foreign land, not, as some may suppose, to repent of his sins, but solely to hide his dishonored head from the contempt of all who knew him, and begin again under new auspices a second career of vice and crime.
Harold Colville's patience could not uphold him, as it did his colleague, the doctor. Solitude and confinement fairly maddened him.
Within a few months after the trial he hung himself in his cell, and sent his wicked soul forth into the darkness of eternity.
Fanny Colville was thus left a widow, and on producing requisite evidence that she had been the dead man's wife, inherited his handsome property.