My eyes had just begun to lay aside mourning when I received at the dinner-table one stormy night the local paper. I took it for my wife, who had a penchant for reading the patent-medicine advertisements; but on the present occasion I displayed an unholy eagerness to get at its contents. More misery! More horrible complications!
Almost the entire sheet was given up to a description of the burglary. There was a picture of Bella's house and of Bella herself; of the cook, of the coachman—yes, and even of the bloodhounds.
I had puzzled my brain since that night in trying to imagine why the hounds had sped past our tree, our noble tree, instead of gathering in convention at its base and talking the matter over among themselves while we starved to death upstairs. The paper gave the solution of the problem. They were pursuing the trail that led to our milkman's farm—the poor creature of whom I had basely borrowed our suits and overshoes.
The worthy man had been arrested and haled before the nearest justice of the peace, and had he not been able to prove an alibi to the effect that he was watering his cows at the time, he would have been summarily dealt with.
But he had held his peace about my share in the transaction—bless him! and being a thrifty man, had brought a suit against Bella for threatening his life with her dogs.
Yet I had no cause for congratulation, for now I was in the milkman's power as well as Bella's; and the very next day the honest fellow put in an appearance, very humble and yet very decided, and insisted that I should present him with Ethel's prize Frisian cow as a premium on his silence.
And I had to consent, though my wife had hysterics in parting with the animal, and sobbed out her determination to tell Mrs. McGoozle everything when that lady arrived in a few days.
This may not sound very terrible to you, but I knew the dreadful import of her words.
There was a flash of light through the gloom of my suicidal thoughts the next morning that made my heart beat high with hope.
I read in the morning paper that Bella, the cause of all my trouble, was dead, and that there was to be a sale of her effects at a New York auction-room the next day.