“You all know the story of the tragedy in which Miss Somerville and myself figured so prominently,” he said. “Miss Groves has chosen to revive it in all its horror, but she has not been very accurate. She has left out one link in the chain.”
Patty, who had been eyeing Dan all along with fear and trembling, now attempted to speak and utter a defiant denial, but the man by her side said to her sternly:
“Hush! Wait till he tells his story!”
Doctor Ludington continued:
“Through a hideous practical joke that Miss Groves and her sister were too cowardly or too malicious to confess, the whole horrible complication came about, causing one man’s death, and wrecking the lives of others. Get up, Dan Ellis, and tell the company your part in that hideous Hallowe’en tragedy!”
Dan shambled to his feet, looking almost manly in his eagerness to undo his mistake. He saw beautiful Eva looking at him with eager, hopeful eyes, and her glance encouraged him to speak out before the grand company.
“’Twarn’t my fault; I never would a-done anythin’ to hurt you, little Eva,” he said, looking straight into her wondering eyes. “But Patty and Lydia, they said as how you was setting supper by your bed to try your fortin’, that your intended husbin’ would come an’ sup with you at midnight in a dream. Do you remember it, little Eva?”
They were all too much interested to smile even when he kept on addressing her as if she were still a child and his social equal, but looking at her as she murmured: “Yes, Dan,” they saw her glance quickly and blushingly at Doctor Ludington, then her lashes drooped again.
Dan nodded and continued:
“Pat and Lyd said what a fine joke ’twould be for some horrid, ugly old man to ’pear at the bedside, and they give me some money to go to old Doctor Binks’ offis arter ’leven o’clock an’ tell him to come right straight off to little Eva; she was a-chokin’ with a nawful bad cold. I went and told him all right, but he was drunk as a biled owl, and so he sent his assistant, Doc Ludington, in his place. And that’s how the hull trouble come about. I could swar to it on a thousand Bibles! Then, when thet trouble come in through Terry Groves’ makin’ a mistake and shootin’ too soon, his sisters was ’shamed to own their part in bringing the hull thing on. They kep’ mute as mice, and told me if I confessed what I had done at their biddin’ I would be hung ackcessary to the murder, and ’vised me to run away, which I done!”