The last person who saw them that night was Mrs. Clark. The brothers had insisted that both she and the Irish girl should leave early in the day,—replying to all offers of putting the house in order, that they preferred to be alone. But on her way home after the funeral, Mrs. Clark passed the house in a friend's sleigh and stopped a moment for her bundle, which in the hurry of the morning had been forgotten. To her surprise, as she approached the door, she saw that there were no lights visible in any of the windows, although it was already very dark. Thinking the brothers were in the back part of the house, she pushed open the door, which yielded to her touch, and was just about to make her way towards the kitchen, when she heard a sound in the parlor, and then these words, quite distinctly:—
"Are you ready, James?"
"Yes,—only one word. It is a long account we have to settle, and it must be final."
"It shall be. Mine is a heavy score. Years ago I swore to wipe it out, and now the time has come."
Mrs. Clark's knock interrupted them. There was an angry exclamation, and the door was opened. To her intense surprise, no light came from within. She could not understand how they could settle their accounts in the darkness; but they gave her no time for reflection; an angry voice, in answer to her inquiries, bade her go on to the kitchen, and she hastened off. There she found a single candle burning dimly; by its light she picked up her bundle, and, leaving the door open to see her way, returned to the front of the house. Though not a nervous woman, she felt an undefined fear at the mysterious darkness and silence; and as she passed the brothers standing in the doorway, she was struck with fresh terror at the livid pallor of those two stern faces that looked out from the black shadow. When she was going out, she heard the door of the parlor bolted within, and she rejoined her friends, right glad to be away from the sad house.
So those two men were left alone, locked into the dark room together, in the horrible companionship of their inextinguishable hatred and their own bad hearts. It will forever remain unknown what passed between them through the long hours of that awful night, when the wind howled madly around the lightless house, and the clouds gathered blacker and thicker, shrouding it in impenetrable gloom.
Three days passed before any living creature approached the spot,—three days of cold unparalleled in the annals of that country,—cold so severe that it compelled even the hardy farmers to keep as much as possible by the fireside. On the fourth day, Isaac Welles began to think they had been quite long enough alone, and he started with a friend to visit the Blount brothers. Arrived at the farm-house, they saw the sleigh standing before the door, but no sign of any one stirring. The shutters of the windows were closed, and no smoke came out of the chimney. They knocked at the door. No answer. Surprised at the silence, they at length tried to open it. It was not locked, but some heavy substance barred the way. With difficulty they forced it open wide enough to go in.
To this day those men shudder and turn pale, as they recall the awful scene that awaited them within that house, which was, in fact, a tomb.
The obstacle which opposed their entrance was the dead body of John Blount. He lay stretched on the floor,—his face mutilated by cuts and disfigured with gore, his clothes disordered and bloody, and one hand nearly severed from the arm by a deep gash at the wrist; yet it was evident that none of these wounds were mortal. After that terrible conflict, he had probably crawled to the door and fallen there, faint with loss of blood; the silent, cruel cold had completed the work of death.
Following the blood-track, the two men entered the parlor, with suspended breath and hearts that almost ceased to beat. There they found the dead body of James Blount,—his clothes half torn off, in the violence of the strife that could end only in murder. A long, deep cut on the throat had terminated that awful struggle, though many other less dangerous wounds showed how desperate it had been. He lay just as he fell,—his features still contracted with a look of defiance and hatred, and in his right hand still clasped a long, sharp knife. He had succumbed in that mortal conflict, which quenched a lifelong quarrel, and was to prove fatal alike to victor and vanquished. Thus the vow of John Blount was fulfilled,—the pent-up hatred of years satisfied in his brother's murder.