Heaven knows how it all would have ended had not a young medical student in the party ventured to insert some morphine into his arm, drugging him into a restless sleep.
So the night wore away, and early morning brought the inquest and a curious crowd to Stony Ledge.
All the family were rigidly examined, but no light was thrown upon the mystery; nothing was learned either to support or refute the theory of Eva Somerville’s dishonor that had driven her cousin to avenge her by murder.
A simple verdict was rendered in accordance with the facts—the two men had come to death by each other’s hands in a battle over Eva Somerville.
Then the body of Doctor Ludington was borne away to Fernside, and at Stony Ledge the preparations went forward for Terry’s burial on the next day.
Meanwhile, every one believed that the exiled granddaughter had gone away as ordered the previous night to seek her father in New York.
Every tongue was busy in pity or blame. Some said it was a pity that Doctor Ludington richly deserved his fate; others declared that Eva was old enough to know better than to carry on a clandestine love affair with the enemy of the family. She might have known he meant no good.
But, strangely enough, so biased was the evidence that no one doubted her guilt. All thought she had been very lucky to have a father to go to in New York, where perhaps her story need never become known.
And while the busy tongues wagged all day over the scandal and the tragedy that had set the whole countryside agog, no one dreamed that as the day waxed old, and the winds raged, and the rain and snow drove through the bleak, bitter air, putting out the forest fires, and clearing the smoky atmosphere so that one could see the mountain tops again, that little Eva, freezing and starving, lost in the lonely wood, bereft of reason by the weight of her woe, was wandering back and forth beneath the bare trees, over the rustling leaves, wreathing her golden locks with blossoming briers and scarlet leaves.
Miles and miles had she wandered from Stony Ledge, but though she had lost the road in the stifling smoke and darkness, she had indeed come upon the lands of Goody Brown’s lazy spouse, not more than a mile from their comfortable home.