Ah, no, it could not be—and yet——
Away back in Ethel’s memory was a picture of the Deerfield woods that skirted the lawn at The Maples. She saw the tall, grave-faced miner and the imperious girl, and even now the words rang in her ears—“I’m not the good man you think, Miss Barrington!” Half-forgotten tales of “Hustler Joe’s queerness” came to her, too, and assumed an appearance of evil.
And was this to be the explanation of that ride—that ride on which she had almost betrayed herself only to be met by stern words of conventionality? Was this the meaning of the infrequent calls, the averted face, the eyes so misery-laden if by chance they met her own?
A murderer?
Ah, no, no! He was so good—so kind—so brave! There were Pedler Jim, the miners whose lives he had saved, and the multitudes of the city’s poor to give the lie to so base a charge; and yet—Martin had said that these very benefactions were but a lullaby to a guilty conscience.
The night brought Ethel no relief. The dark was peopled with horrid shapes; and sleep, when it came, was dream-haunted and unrefreshing. In the morning, weary and heavy-eyed, she awoke to a day of restless wandering from room to room. Twenty-four hours later her trunk was packed and she was on her way to The Maples.
It was at about this time that Westbrook’s philanthropy took a new turn. He began to spend long hours in the city prison while society looked on and shrugged disdainful shoulders. The striped-garbed creatures behind the bars seemed to possess a peculiar fascination for him. He haunted their habitation daily, yet he never failed to shudder at every clang of the iron doors.
Particularly was he kind to those outcasts from human sympathy—the murderers. So far did he carry this branch of his charity that the authorities ventured to remonstrate with the great man one day, telling him that he was putting a premium on the horrible crime. They never forgot the look that came over the beneficent Mr. Joseph Westbrook’s face as he turned and walked away.
It was on that night that the servants said he sat up until morning in his library, raging around the room like some mad creature, so that they were all afraid, and one came and listened at the door. There he heard his master cry out:
“My God—is it not enough? Is there no atonement—no peace?” Then there was a long, quivering sigh, and a noise as of a clinched hand striking the desk, and a low muttered, “Oh, the pitiless God of Justice!”