Still as he gazed he fancied that the clenched hands moved, that a bitter smile writhed the thin parted lips of the dead; and influenced by a strange fascination, against which he struggled in vain, he continued to watch the ghastly countenance, until horror and astonishment involved every other object in misty obscurity.
He heard the sound of approaching footsteps, but his limbs had lost the power of motion, his tongue of speech, and he suffered the constables, who entered with Grenard Pike, to lead him away without offering the least resistance. They placed him in a post-chaise, between two of the officers of justice, and put the irons upon his wrists, but he remained in the same state of stupefaction, making no remark upon his unusual situation, or taking the least notice of his strange companions. When the vehicle stopped at the entrance of the county jail, then, and not until then, did the awfulness of his situation appear to strike him. Starting from his frightful mental abstraction, he eagerly demanded of the officers why his hands were manacled, and for what crime they had brought him there?
When told for the murder of his father, he regarded the men with a look of surprised incredulity. "My poor father! what interest could I have to murder my father? You cannot think I committed this horrid crime?"
"We do not know what to think, Mr. Hurdlestone," said one of the men. "I am very sorry to see you in this plight, but appearances are very much against you. Your father was an old man and a bad man, and it is little you owed to his parental care. But he could not have lived many years, and all the entailed property must have been yours; it was an act of insanity on your part to kill him. A fearful crime to send him so unprepared into the presence of his God."
"You cannot believe me guilty," said Anthony.
The men shook their heads. "I condemn no man until the law condemns, him," returned the former spokesman. "But there is evidence enough in your case to hang a hundred men."
"I have one witness in my favor. He knows my innocence, and to Him I appeal," said Anthony, solemnly.
"Aye, but will he prove it my lad?"
"I trust He will."
"Well, time will show. The assizes will be held next week, so you have not long to remain in doubt. I would be inclined to think you innocent, if you could prove to me what business you had with loaded pistols in your possession—why one was loaded, and the other unloaded, and how your hands and clothes came stained with blood—why you quarrelled with the old man last night, and went to him again to-night with offensive weapons on your person, and at such an unseasonable hour? These are stubborn facts."