The night wore slowly on. Incoming billows of the rising tide moaned sullenly upon the sandy beach and sent a rustling hiss through the shivering reeds and rushes in marshy inlets; whippoorwills piped from the cover of the leafy wood and drowsy cocks, awaking at the midnight hour, called to each other from their barn-yard roosts. All other sounds of motion and of life were hushed, save that an owl darted in sudden fright from one of the Van Deust elms, at sight of a pale-faced man who sprang out of a back window of the old homestead and ran down the lane, looking back over his shoulder and wiping blood from his hands, as he ran.
XI.
WHAT LEM PAWLETT DISCOVERED.
It was on the morning succeeding that night, that Lem Pawlett and Squire Bodley made the discovery of the murder of Jacob Van Deust, as has already been described. As the reader will remember, the neighbors assembled about the corpse of the murdered man, believed that they had grounds for suspecting Peter Van Deust of the assassination of his brother, and even discussed the advisability of his arrest. He, unconscious of the ugly rumors afloat about him, and regardless of the dark looks of those by whom he was surrounded, lay upon his face in his room, weeping as one without hope for the lifelong companion so cruelly reft from his side. He had never known, until death parted them, how dear to him was his gentle-hearted brother and how very lonely the world would be without him. And every unkind passionate word he had uttered, and every selfish thought to which the evil promptings of avarice had given birth in his heart, since that unlucky fortune came them, seemed now to rise up before him like an accusing ghost, so that the old man, burying his face in his hands, sobbed aloud:
"Oh, Jacob, Jacob! I am so sorry for it all."
Perhaps the spirit freed from that weak lump of clay in the crimson pool, might have heard the cry and, knowing the true meaning and the penitence of the sorrowing heart, have well forgiven; but a neighbor, leaning against the door-post and peering curiously in at the grief-stricken old man, turned quickly to his comrade without the threshold and exclaimed in a low excited whisper:
"Gosh! Joe. He's just as good as owned up that he did it, and says he's 'sorry for it' now, 'cause he's scared of being found out."
And then by the time this had been repeated to a half-dozen—as it was in little more than as many minutes—those who heard the story last, learned that Peter had just made to somebody a full confession of having murdered his brother. But in the very height of the excitement to which this gave rise, Lem Pawlett, who was still prying about the room, with something of an instinctive detective genius guiding his movements, made an important discovery.
Drawing aside the figured chintz curtains that hung close over the back window of the dead man's room, he noticed that a mud-wasp's nest of clay had fallen to the sill, from the place where the insect had stuck it in the angle of the sash and frame of the window, two or three feet above. Knowing how firmly the ingenious little builders of those houses are accustomed to place them, he recognized that some unusual violence must have been employed to break it loose. That it had not been intentionally knocked down was probable, else the clay would not have been left littering the window sill. That the mischief had been freshly done, was manifest. He tried the sash, and found that it could easily be lifted. Its only fastening had been a nail, thrust into a hole in the frame above the sash; but rust had corroded the nail to merely a thin rotten wire. The head of it came off in his fingers, when he felt it, and he observed that it had been broken, with what seemed a fresh fracture, just where it entered the frame. It must, he thought, have been broken by some one lifting the sash from without, as a person opening the window from the inside would have been likely to pull it out first, as a matter of convenience. He raised the sash fully, and uttered an exclamation of surprise, the first sound that had called anybody's attention to his investigations.
There, plain to be seen in the soft black wood of the old sill, were two deep dents that appeared to have been made by some flat, square-edged metal instrument, an inch wide. The one beneath that side of the sash upon which the nail was broken off, was a little the deepest. Upon the bottom of the sash, on the outer side, were two deep impressions corresponding with the dents in the sill, and seemingly made by the same instrument, which, as Lem judged, was some sort of a stout chisel, used as a lever. All the marks were fresh.
The loose earth of the little garden just beneath the window, where the drip of the eaves had kept it soft and damp, showed the treading there of feet shod in high-heeled and square-toed shoes, or boots, such as might have been made for city wear, and not at all like those worn in the country. Following those tracks, they led Lem, and the crowd now at his elbow, to a point where the weight of a person crossing the rickety old "worm" fence had broken a rotten rail; and, near by, one of the high-heeled shoes had trodden down the stem of a lily that was in its path. The fracture of the rail was fresh, and the lily, broken from its stem and lying on the humid earth, was not yet withered. But the high heel had crushed one of its snowy petals.