"Go on, mother," said Beardsley hastily. "Louisa's innocence is not called in question. Remember that. Tell everything you know without scruple."
The old lady began again in a lower voice: "We expected an arrival that afternoon—Houston Simms, a distant kinsman of Major Scheffer's. He was from Kentucky—a large owner of blooded stock—and was on his way home from New York, where his horses had just won the prizes at the fall races. He had promised to stop for the wedding, and the carriage had been sent to the station to meet him. The station, as you know, is five miles up the road. By some mistake the carriage was late, and Houston started, with his valise in his hand, to walk to the house, making a short cut through the woods. When the carriage came back empty, and the driver told this to us, some of the young men started down to meet the old gentleman. It was then about four o'clock, and growing dark rapidly. The wind, I recollect, blew sharply, and a cold rain set in. I came out on the long porch, and walked up and down, feeling uneasy and annoyed at Louisa's prolonged absence. Colonel Merrick, who had been looking for her all through the house, had just learned from me where she had gone, and was starting with umbrellas to meet her, when she came suddenly up to us, crossing the ploughed field, not from the direction of Huldah's cabin, but from the road. We both hurried toward her; but when she caught sight of Colonel Merrick she stopped short, putting out her hands with a look of terror and misery quite indescribable. 'Take me away from him! Oh, for God's sake!' she cried. I saw she had suffered some great shock, and taking her in my arms, led her in, motioning him to keep back. She was so weak as to fall, but did not faint, nor lose consciousness for a single moment. All night she lay, her eyes wandering from side to side as in momentary expectancy of the appearance of some one. No anodyne had any effect upon her—every nerve seemed strained to its utmost tension. But she did not speak a word except at the sound of Colonel Merrick's voice or step, when she would beg piteously that he should be kept away from her. Toward morning she fell into a kind of stupor, and when she awoke appeared to be calmer. She beckoned to me, and asked that her uncle Scheffer and Judge Grove, her other guardian, should be sent for. She received them standing, apparently quite grave and composed. She asked that several other persons should be called in, desiring, she said, to have as many witnesses as possible to what she was about to make known. 'You all know,' she said, 'that to-morrow was to have been my wedding day. I wish you now to bear witness that I refuse to-day or at any future time to marry Paul Merrick, and that no argument or persuasion will induce me to do so. And I wish,' raising her hand, to keep silence—'I wish to say publicly that it is no fault or ill doing of Colonel Merrick's that has driven me to this resolve. I say this as in the sight of Almighty God.' Nobody argued, or scarcely, indeed, spoke to her. Every one saw that she was physically a very ill woman; and it was commonly believed that she had received some sudden shock which had unhinged her mind. An hour afterward the searching party came in (for the young men, not finding Houston Simms, had gone out again to search for him). They had found his dead body concealed in the woods by Mill's spring. You know the place. There was a pistol shot through the head, and a leathern pocketbook, which had apparently contained money, was found empty a few feet away. That was the end of it all, Mr. Floyd."
"You mean that Simms's murderer was never found?"
"Never," said Beardsley, "though detectives were brought down from Richmond and set on the track. Their theory—a plausible one enough too—was that Simms had been followed from New York by men who knew the large sum he earned from the races, and that they had robbed and murdered him, and readily escaped through the swamps."
"It never was my belief," said Dr. Scheffer, "that he was murdered at all. It was hinted that he had stopped in a gambling house in New York, and there lost whatever sum he had won at the races; and that rather than meet his family in debt and penniless, he blew out his brains in the first lonely place to which he came. That explanation was plain enough."
"What was the end of the story so far as Miss Waring was concerned?" I asked.
"Unfortunately, it never has had an end," said Mrs. Beardsley. "The mystery remains. She was ill afterward; indeed, it was years before she regained her bodily strength as before. But her mind had never been unhinged, as Paul Merrick thought. He waited patiently, thinking that some day her reason would return, and she would come back to him. But Louisa Waring was perfectly sane even in the midst of her agony on that night. From that day until now she has never by word or look given any clue by which the reason of her refusal to marry him could be discovered. Of course the murder and her strange conduct produced a great excitement in this quiet neighborhood. But you can imagine all that. I simply have given you the facts which bear on the case."
"The first suspicion, I suppose, rested on Merrick?" I said.
"Yes. The natural explanation of her conduct was that she had witnessed an encounter in the woods between Simms and her lover, in which the old man was killed. Fortunately, however, Paul Merrick had not left the house once during the afternoon until he went out with me to meet her."
"And then Miss Waring was selected as the guilty party?"