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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dead Alive, by Wilkie Collins
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Dead Alive
+
+Author: Wilkie Collins
+
+Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7891]
+Posting Date: July 31, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEAD ALIVE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by James Rusk
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DEAD ALIVE
+
+By Wilkie Collins
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. 
+
+THE SICK MAN.
+
+"HEART all right," said the doctor. "Lungs all right. No organic
+disease that I can discover. Philip Lefrank, don't alarm yourself. You
+are not going to die yet. The disease you are suffering from
+is--overwork. The remedy in your case is--rest."
+
+So the doctor spoke, in my chambers in the Temple (London); having been
+sent for to see me about half an hour after I had alarmed my clerk by
+fainting at my desk. I have no wish to intrude myself needlessly on the
+reader's attention; but it may be necessary to add, in the way of
+explanation, that I am a "junior" barrister in good practice. I come
+from the channel Island of Jersey. The French spelling of my name
+(Lefranc) was Anglicized generations since--in the days when the letter
+"k" was still used in England at the end of words which now terminate
+in "c." We hold our heads high, nevertheless, as a Jersey family. It is
+to this day a trial to my father to hear his son described as a member
+of the English bar.
+
+"Rest!" I repeated, when my medical adviser had done. "My good friend,
+are you aware that it is term-time? The courts are sitting. Look at the
+briefs waiting for me on that table! Rest means ruin in my case."
+
+"And work," added the doctor, quietly, "means death."
+
+I started. He was not trying to frighten me: he was plainly in earnest.
+
+"It is merely a question of time," he went on. "You have a fine
+constitution; you are a young man; but you cannot deliberately overwork
+your brain, and derange your nervous system, much longer. Go away at
+once. If you are a good sailor, take a sea-voyage. The ocean air is the
+best of all air to build you up again. No: I don't want to write a
+prescription. I decline to physic you. I have no more to say."
+
+With these words my medical friend left the room. I was obstinate: I
+went into court the same day.
+
+The senior counsel in the case on which I was engaged applied to me for
+some information which it was my duty to give him. To my horror and
+amazement, I was perfectly unable to collect my ideas; facts and dates
+all mingled together confusedly in my mind. I was led out of court
+thoroughly terrified about myself. The next day my briefs went back to
+the attorneys; and I followed my doctor's advice by taking my passage
+for America in the first steamer that sailed for New York.
+
+I had chosen the voyage to America in preference to any other trip by
+sea, with a special object in view. A relative of my mother's had
+emigrated to the United States many years since, and had thriven there
+as a farmer. He had given me a general invitation to visit him if I
+ever crossed the Atlantic. The long period of inaction, under the name
+of _rest_, to which the doctor's decision had condemned me, could
+hardly be more pleasantly occupied, as I thought, than by paying a
+visit to my relation, and seeing what I could of America in that way.
+After a brief sojourn at New York, I started by railway for the
+residence of my host--Mr. Isaac Meadowcroft, of Morwick Farm.
+
+There are some of the grandest natural prospects on the face of
+creation in America. There is also to be found in certain States of the
+Union, by way of wholesome contrast, scenery as flat, as monotonous,
+and as uninteresting to the traveler, as any that the earth can show.
+The part of the country in which M. Meadowcroft's farm was situated
+fell within this latter category. I looked round me when I stepped out
+of the railway-carriage on the platform at Morwick Station; and I said
+to myself, "If to be cured means, in my case, to be dull, I have
+accurately picked out the very place for the purpose."
+
+I look back at those words by the light of later events; and I
+pronounce them, as you will soon pronounce them, to be the words of an
+essentially rash man, whose hasty judgment never stopped to consider
+what surprises time and chance together might have in store for him.
+
+Mr. Meadowcroft's eldest son, Ambrose, was waiting at the station to
+drive me to the farm.
+
+There was no forewarning, in the appearance of Ambrose Meadowcroft, of
+the strange and terrible events that were to follow my arrival at
+Morwick. A healthy, handsome young fellow, one of thousands of other
+healthy, handsome young fellows, said, "How d'ye do, Mr. Lefrank? Glad
+to see you, sir. Jump into the buggy; the man will look after your
+portmanteau." With equally conventional politeness I answered, "Thank
+you. How are you all at home?" So we started on the way to the farm.
+
+Our conversation on the drive began with the subjects of agriculture
+and breeding. I displayed my total ignorance of crops and cattle before
+we had traveled ten yards on our journey. Ambrose Meadowcroft cast
+about for another topic, and failed to find it. Upon this I cast about
+on my side, and asked, at a venture, if I had chosen a convenient time
+for my visit The young farmer's stolid brown face instantly brightened.
+I had evidently hit, hap-hazard, on an interesting subject.
+
+"You couldn't have chosen a better time," he said. "Our house has never
+been so cheerful as it is now."
+
+"Have you any visitors staying with you?"
+
+"It's not exactly a visitor. It's a new member of the family who has
+come to live with us."
+
+"A new member of the family! May I ask who it is?"
+
+Ambrose Meadowcroft considered before he replied; touched his horse
+with the whip; looked at me with a certain sheepish hesitation; and
+suddenly burst out with the truth, in the plainest possible words:
+
+"It's just the nicest girl, sir, you ever saw in your life."
+
+"Ay, ay! A friend of your sister's, I suppose?"
+
+"A friend? Bless your heart! it's our little American cousin, Naomi
+Colebrook."
+
+I vaguely remembered that a younger sister of Mr. Meadowcroft's had
+married an American merchant in the remote past, and had died many
+years since, leaving an only child. I was now further informed that the
+father also was dead. In his last moments he had committed his helpless
+daughter to the compassionate care of his wife's relations at Morwick.
+
+"He was always a speculating man," Ambrose went on. "Tried one thing
+after another, and failed in all. Died, sir, leaving barely enough to
+bury him. My father was a little doubtful, before she came here, how
+his American niece would turn out. We are English, you know; and,
+though we do live in the United States, we stick fast to our English
+ways and habits. We don't much like American women in general, I can
+tell you; but when Naomi made her appearance she conquered us all. Such
+a girl! Took her place as one of the family directly. Learned to make
+herself useful in the dairy in a week's time. I tell you this--she
+hasn't been with us quite two months yet, and we wonder already how we
+ever got on without her!"
+
+Once started on the subject of Naomi Colebrook, Ambrose held to that
+one topic and talked on it without intermission. It required no great
+gift of penetration to discover the impression which the American
+cousin had produced in this case. The young fellow's enthusiasm
+communicated itself, in a certain tepid degree, to me. I really felt a
+mild flutter of anticipation at the prospect of seeing Naomi, when we
+drew up, toward the close of evening, at the gates of Morwick Farm.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. 
+
+THE NEW FACES.
+
+IMMEDIATELY on my arrival, I was presented to Mr. Meadowcroft, the
+father.
+
+The old man had become a confirmed invalid, confined by chronic
+rheumatism to his chair. He received me kindly, and a little wearily as
+well. His only unmarried daughter (he had long since been left a
+widower) was in the room, in attendance on her father. She was a
+melancholy, middle-aged woman, without visible attractions of any
+sort--one of those persons who appear to accept the obligation of
+living under protest, as a burden which they would never have consented
+to bear if they had only been consulted first. We three had a dreary
+little interview in a parlor of bare walls; and then I was permitted to
+go upstairs, and unpack my portmanteau in my own room.
+
+"Supper will be at nine o'clock, sir," said Miss Meadowcroft.
+
+She pronounced those words as if "supper" was a form of domestic
+offense, habitually committed by the men, and endured by the women. I
+followed the groom up to my room, not over-well pleased with my first
+experience of the farm.
+
+No Naomi and no romance, thus far!
+
+My room was clean--oppressively clean. I quite longed to see a little
+dust somewhere. My library was limited to the Bible and the
+Prayer-Book. My view from the window showed me a dead flat in a partial
+state of cultivation, fading sadly from view in the waning light. Above
+the head of my spruce white bed hung a scroll, bearing a damnatory
+quotation from Scripture in emblazoned letters of red and black. The
+dismal presence of Miss Meadowcroft had passed over my bedroom, and had
+blighted it. My spirits sank as I looked round me. Supper-time was
+still an event in the future. I lighted the candles and took from my
+portmanteau what I firmly believe to have been the first French novel
+ever produced at Morwick Farm. It was one of the masterly and charming
+stories of Dumas the elder. In five minutes I was in a new world, and
+my melancholy room was full of the liveliest French company. The sound
+of an imperative and uncompromising bell recalled me in due time to the
+regions of reality. I looked at my watch. Nine o'clock.
+
+Ambrose met me at the bottom of the stairs, and showed me the way to
+the supper-room.
+
+Mr. Meadowcroft's invalid chair had been wheeled to the head of the
+table. On his right-hand side sat his sad and silent daughter. She
+signed to me, with a ghostly solemnity, to take the vacant place on the
+left of her father. Silas Meadowcroft came in at the same moment, and
+was presented to me by his brother. There was a strong family likeness
+between them, Ambrose being the taller and the handsomer man of the
+two. But there was no marked character in either face. I set them down
+as men with undeveloped qualities, waiting (the good and evil qualities
+alike) for time and circumstances to bring them to their full growth.
+
+The door opened again while I was still studying the two brothers,
+without, I honestly confess, being very favorably impressed by either
+of them. A new member of the family circle, who instantly attracted my
+attention, entered the room.
+
+He was short, spare, and wiry; singularly pale for a person whose life
+was passed in the country. The face was in other respects, besides
+this, a striking face to see. As to the lower part, it was covered with
+a thick black beard and mustache, at a time when shaving was the rule,
+and beards the rare exception, in America. As to the upper part of the
+face, it was irradiated by a pair of wild, glittering brown eyes, the
+expression of which suggested to me that there was something not quite
+right with the man's mental balance. A perfectly sane person in all his
+sayings and doings, so far as I could see, there was still something in
+those wild brown eyes which suggested to me that, under exceptionally
+trying circumstances, he might surprise his oldest friends by acting in
+some exceptionally violent or foolish way. "A little cracked"--that in
+the popular phrase was my impression of the stranger who now made his
+appearance in the supper-room.
+
+Mr. Meadowcroft the elder, having not spoken one word thus far, himself
+introduced the newcomer to me, with a side-glance at his sons, which
+had something like defiance in it--a glance which, as I was sorry to
+notice, was returned with the defiance on their side by the two young
+men.
+
+"Philip Lefrank, this is my overlooker, Mr. Jago," said the old man,
+formally presenting us. "John Jago, this is my young relative by
+marriage, Mr. Lefrank. He is not well; he has come over the ocean for
+rest, and change of scene. Mr. Jago is an American, Philip. I hope you
+have no prejudice against Americans. Make acquaintance with Mr. Jago.
+Sit together." He cast another dark look at his sons; and the sons
+again returned it. They pointedly drew back from John Jago as he
+approached the empty chair next to me and moved round to the opposite
+side of the table. It was plain that the man with the beard stood high
+in the father's favor, and that he was cordially disliked for that or
+for some other reason by the sons.
+
+The door opened once more. A young lady quietly joined the party at the
+supper-table.
+
+Was the young lady Naomi Colebrook? I looked at Ambrose, and saw the
+answer in his face. Naomi Colebrook at last!
+
+A pretty girl, and, so far as I could judge by appearances, a good girl
+too. Describing her generally, I may say that she had a small head,
+well carried, and well set on her shoulders; bright gray eyes, that
+looked at you honestly, and meant what they looked; a trim, slight
+little figure--too slight for our English notions of beauty; a strong
+American accent; and (a rare thing in America) a pleasantly toned
+voice, which made the accent agreeable to English ears. Our first
+impressions of people are, in nine cases out of ten, the right
+impressions. I liked Naomi Colebrook at first sight; liked her pleasant
+smile; liked her hearty shake of the hand when we were presented to
+each other. "If I get on well with nobody else in this house," I
+thought to myself, "I shall certainly get on well with _you_."
+
+For once in a way, I proved a true prophet. In the atmosphere of
+smoldering enmities at Morwick Farm, the pretty American girl and I
+remained firm and true friends from first to last. Ambrose made room
+for Naomi to sit between his brother and himself. She changed color for
+a moment, and looked at him, with a pretty, reluctant tenderness, as
+she took her chair. I strongly suspected the young farmer of squeezing
+her hand privately, under cover of the tablecloth.
+
+The supper was not a merry one. The only cheerful conversation was the
+conversation across the table between Naomi and me.
+
+For some incomprehensible reason, John Jago seemed to be ill at ease in
+the presence of his young countrywoman. He looked up at Naomi
+doubtingly from his plate, and looked down again slowly with a frown.
+When I addressed him, he answered constrainedly. Even when he spoke to
+Mr. Meadowcroft, he was still on his guard--on his guard against the
+two young men, as I fancied by the direction which his eyes took on
+these occasions. When we began our meal, I had noticed for the first
+time that Silas Meadowcroft's left hand was strapped up with surgical
+plaster; and I now further observed that John Jago's wandering brown
+eyes, furtively looking at everybody round the table in turn, looked
+with a curious, cynical scrutiny at the young man's injured hand.
+
+By way of making my first evening at the farm all the more embarrassing
+to me as a stranger, I discovered before long that the father and sons
+were talking indirectly _at_ each other, through Mr. Jago and through
+me. When old Mr. Meadowcroft spoke disparagingly to his overlooker of
+some past mistake made in the cultivation of the arable land of the
+farm, old Mr. Meadowcroft's eyes pointed the application of his hostile
+criticism straight in the direction of his two sons. When the two sons
+seized a stray remark of mine about animals in general, and applied it
+satirically to the mismanagement of sheep and oxen in particular, they
+looked at John Jago, while they talked to me. On occasions of this
+sort--and they happened frequently--Naomi struck in resolutely at the
+right moment, and turned the talk to some harmless topic. Every time
+she took a prominent part in this way in keeping the peace, melancholy
+Miss Meadowcroft looked slowly round at her in stern and silent
+disparagement of her interference. A more dreary and more disunited
+family party I never sat at the table with. Envy, hatred, malice and
+uncharitableness are never so essentially detestable to my mind as when
+they are animated by a sense of propriety, and work under the surface.
+But for my interest in Naomi, and my other interest in the little
+love-looks which I now and then surprised passing between her and
+Ambrose, I should never have sat through that supper. I should
+certainly have taken refuge in my French novel and my own room.
+
+At last the unendurably long meal, served with ostentatious profusion,
+was at an end. Miss Meadowcroft rose with her ghostly solemnity, and
+granted me my dismissal in these words:
+
+"We are early people at the farm, Mr. Lefrank. I wish you good-night."
+
+She laid her bony hands on the back of Mr. Meadowcroft's invalid-chair,
+cut him short in his farewell salutation to me, and wheeled him out to
+his bed as if she were wheeling him out to his grave.
+
+"Do you go to your room immediately, sir? If not, may I offer you a
+cigar--provided the young gentlemen will permit it?"
+
+So, picking his words with painful deliberation, and pointing his
+reference to "the young gentlemen" with one sardonic side-look at them,
+Mr. John Jago performed the duties of hospitality on his side. I
+excused myself from accepting the cigar. With studied politeness, the
+man of the glittering brown eyes wished me a good night's rest, and left
+the room.
+
+Ambrose and Silas both approached me hospitably, with their open
+cigar-cases in their hands.
+
+"You were quite right to say 'No,'" Ambrose began. "Never smoke with
+John Jago. His cigars will poison you."
+
+"And never believe a word John Jago says to you," added Silas. "He is
+the greatest liar in America, let the other be whom he may."
+
+Naomi shook her forefinger reproachfully at them, as if the two sturdy
+young farmers had been two children.
+
+"What will Mr. Lefrank think," she said, "if you talk in that way of a
+person whom your father respects and trusts? Go and smoke. I am ashamed
+of both of you."
+
+Silas slunk away without a word of protest. Ambrose stood his ground,
+evidently bent on making his peace with Naomi before he left her.
+
+Seeing that I was in the way, I walked aside toward a glass door at the
+lower end of the room. The door opened on the trim little farm-garden,
+bathed at that moment in lovely moonlight. I stepped out to enjoy the
+scene, and found my way to a seat under an elm-tree. The grand repose
+of nature had never looked so unutterably solemn and beautiful as it
+now appeared, after what I had seen and heard inside the house. I
+understood, or thought I understood, the sad despair of humanity which
+led men into monasteries in the old times. The misanthropical side of
+my nature (where is the sick man who is not conscious of that side of
+him?) was fast getting the upper hand of me when I felt a light touch
+laid on my shoulder, and found myself reconciled to my species once
+more by Naomi Colebrook.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. 
+
+THE MOONLIGHT MEETING.
+
+"I WANT to speak to you," Naomi began "You don't think ill of me for
+following you out here? We are not accustomed to stand much on ceremony
+in America."
+
+"You are quite right in America. Pray sit down."
+
+She seated herself by my side, looking at me frankly and fearlessly by
+the light of the moon.
+
+"You are related to the family here," she resumed, "and I am related
+too. I guess I may say to you what I couldn't say to a stranger. I am
+right glad you have come here, Mr. Lefrank; and for a reason, sir,
+which you don't suspect."
+
+"Thank you for the compliment you pay me, Miss Colebrook, whatever the
+reason may be."
+
+She took no notice of my reply; she steadily pursued her own train of
+thought.
+
+"I guess you may do some good, sir, in this wretched house," the girl
+went on, with her eyes still earnestly fixed on my face. "There is no
+love, no trust, no peace, at Morwick Farm. They want somebody here,
+except Ambrose. Don't think ill of Ambrose; he is only thoughtless. I
+say, the rest of them want somebody here to make them ashamed of their
+hard hearts, and their horrid, false, envious ways. You are a
+gentleman; you know more than they know; they can't help themselves;
+they must look up to _you_. Try, Mr. Lefrank, when you have the
+opportunity--pray try, sir, to make peace among them. You heard what
+went on at supper-time; and you were disgusted with it. Oh yes, you
+were! I saw you frown to yourself; and I know what _that_ means in you
+Englishmen."
+
+There was no choice but to speak one's mind plainly to Naomi. I
+acknowledged the impression which had been produced on me at
+supper-time just as plainly as I have acknowledged it in these pages.
+Naomi nodded her head in undisguised approval of my candor.
+
+"That will do, that's speaking out," she said. "But--oh my! you put it
+a deal too mildly, sir, when you say the men don't seem to be on
+friendly terms together here. They hate each other. That's the word,
+Mr. Lefrank--hate; bitter, bitter, bitter hate!" She clinched her
+little fists; she shook them vehemently, by way of adding emphasis to
+her last words; and then she suddenly remembered Ambrose. "Except
+Ambrose," she added, opening her hand again, and laying it very
+earnestly on my arm. "Don't go and misjudge Ambrose, sir. There is no
+harm in poor Ambrose."
+
+The girl's innocent frankness was really irresistible.
+
+"Should I be altogether wrong," I asked, "if I guessed that you were a
+little partial to Ambrose?"
+
+An Englishwoman would have felt, or would at least have assumed, some
+little hesitation at replying to my question. Naomi did not hesitate
+for an instant.
+
+"You are quite right, sir," she said with the most perfect composure.
+"If things go well, I mean to marry Ambrose."
+
+"If things go well," I repeated. "What does that mean? Money?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"It means a fear that I have in my own mind," she answered--"a fear,
+Mr. Lefrank, of matters taking a bad turn among the men here--the
+wicked, hard-hearted, unfeeling men. I don't mean Ambrose, sir; I mean
+his brother Silas, and John Jago. Did you notice Silas's hand? John
+Jago did that, sir, with a knife."
+
+"By accident?" I asked.
+
+"On purpose," she answered. "In return for a blow."
+
+This plain revelation of the state of things at Morwick Farm rather
+staggered me--blows and knives under the rich and respectable roof-tree
+of old Mr. Meadowcroft--blows and knives, not among the laborers, but
+among the masters! My first impression was like _your_ first
+impression, no doubt. I could hardly believe it.
+
+"Are you sure of what you say?" I inquired.
+
+"I have it from Ambrose. Ambrose would never deceive me. Ambrose knows
+all about it."
+
+My curiosity was powerfully excited. To what sort of household had I
+rashly voyaged across the ocean in search of rest and quiet?
+
+"May I know all about it too?" I said.
+
+"Well, I will try and tell you what Ambrose told me. But you must
+promise me one thing first, sir. Promise you won't go away and leave us
+when you know the whole truth. Shake hands on it, Mr. Lefrank; come,
+shake hands on it."
+
+There was no resisting her fearless frankness. I shook hands on it.
+Naomi entered on her narrative the moment I had given her my pledge,
+without wasting a word by way of preface.
+
+"When you are shown over the farm here," she began, "you will see that
+it is really two farms in one. On this side of it, as we look from
+under this tree, they raise crops: on the other side--on much the
+larger half of the land, mind--they raise cattle. When Mr. Meadowcroft
+got too old and too sick to look after his farm himself, the boys (I
+mean Ambrose and Silas) divided the work between them. Ambrose looked
+after the crops, and Silas after the cattle. Things didn't go well,
+somehow, under their management. I can't tell you why. I am only sure
+Ambrose was not in fault. The old man got more and more dissatisfied,
+especially about his beasts. His pride is in his beasts. Without saying
+a word to the boys, he looked about privately (_I_ think he was wrong
+in that, sir; don't you?)--he looked about privately for help; and, in
+an evil hour, he heard of John Jago. Do you like John Jago, Mr.
+Lefrank?"
+
+"So far, no. I don't like him."
+
+"Just my sentiments, sir. But I don't know: it's likely we may be
+wrong. There's nothing against John Jago, except that he is so odd in
+his ways. They do say he wears all that nasty hair on his face (I hate
+hair on a man's face) on account of a vow he made when he lost his
+wife. Don't you think, Mr. Lefrank, a man must be a little mad who
+shows his grief at losing his wife by vowing that he will never shave
+himself again? Well, that's what they do say John Jago vowed. Perhaps
+it's a lie. People are such liars here! Anyway, it's truth (the boys
+themselves confess _that_), when John came to the farm, he came with a
+first-rate character. The old father here isn't easy to please; and he
+pleased the old father. Yes, that's so. Mr. Meadowcroft don't like my
+countrymen in general. He's like his sons--English, bitter English, to
+the marrow of his bones. Somehow, in spite of that, John Jago got round
+him; maybe because John does certainly know his business. Oh yes!
+Cattle and crops, John knows his business. Since he's been overlooker,
+things have prospered as they didn't prosper in the time of the boys.
+Ambrose owned as much to me himself. Still, sir, it's hard to be set
+aside for a stranger; isn't it? John gives the orders now. The boys do
+their work; but they have no voice in it when John and the old man put
+their heads together over the business of the farm. I have been long in
+telling you of it, sir, but now you know how the envy and the hatred
+grew among the men before my time. Since I have been here, things seem
+to get worse and worse. There's hardly a day goes by that hard words
+don't pass between the boys and John, or the boys and their father. The
+old man has an aggravating way, Mr. Lefrank--a nasty way, as we do call
+it--of taking John Jago's part. Do speak to him about it when you get
+the chance. The main blame of the quarrel between Silas and John the
+other day lies at his door, as I think. I don't want to excuse Silas,
+either. It was brutal of him--though he _is_ Ambrose's brother--to
+strike John, who is the smaller and weaker man of the two. But it was
+worse than brutal in John, sir, to out with his knife and try to stab
+Silas. Oh, he did it! If Silas had not caught the knife in his hand
+(his hand's awfully cut, I can tell you; I dressed it myself), it might
+have ended, for anything I know, in murder--"
+
+She stopped as the word passed her lips, looked back over her shoulder,
+and started violently.
+
+I looked where my companion was looking. The dark figure of a man was
+standing, watching us, in the shadow of the elm-tree. I rose directly
+to approach him. Naomi recovered her self-possession, and checked me
+before I could interfere.
+
+"Who are you?" she asked, turning sharply toward the stranger. "What do
+you want there?"
+
+The man stepped out from the shadow into the moonlight, and stood
+revealed to us as John Jago.
+
+"I hope I am not intruding?" he said, looking hard at me.
+
+"What do you want?" Naomi repeated.
+
+"I don't wish to disturb you, or to disturb this gentleman," he
+proceeded. "When you are quite at leisure, Miss Naomi, you would be
+doing me a favor if you would permit me to say a few words to you in
+private."
+
+He spoke with the most scrupulous politeness; trying, and trying
+vainly, to conceal some strong agitation which was in possession of
+him. His wild brown eyes--wilder than ever in the moonlight--rested
+entreatingly, with a strange underlying expression of despair, on
+Naomi's face. His hands, clasped lightly in front of him, trembled
+incessantly. Little as I liked the man, he did really impress me as a
+pitiable object at that moment.
+
+"Do you mean that you want to speak to me to-night?" Naomi asked, in
+undisguised surprise.
+
+"Yes, miss, if you please, at your leisure and at Mr. Lefrank's."
+
+Naomi hesitated.
+
+"Won't it keep till to-morrow?" she said.
+
+"I shall be away on farm business to-morrow, miss, for the whole day.
+Please to give me a few minutes this evening." He advanced a step
+toward her; his voice faltered, and dropped timidly to a whisper. "I
+really have something to say to you, Miss Naomi. It would be a kindness
+on your part--a very, very great kindness--if you will let me say it
+before I rest to-night."
+
+I rose again to resign my place to him. Once more Naomi checked me.
+
+"No," she said. "Don't stir." She addressed John Jago very reluctantly:
+"If you are so much in earnest about it, Mr. John, I suppose it must
+be. I can't guess what _you_ can possibly have to say to me which
+cannot be said before a third person. However, it wouldn't be civil, I
+suppose, to say 'No' in my place. You know it's my business to wind up
+the hall-clock at ten every night. If you choose to come and help me,
+the chances are that we shall have the hall to ourselves. Will that
+do?"
+
+"Not in the hall, miss, if you will excuse me."
+
+"Not in the hall!"
+
+"And not in the house either, if I may make so bold."
+
+"What do you mean?" She turned impatiently, and appealed to me. "Do
+_you_ understand him?"
+
+John Jago signed to me imploringly to let him answer for himself.
+
+"Bear with me, Miss Naomi," he said. "I think I can make you understand
+me. There are eyes on the watch, and ears on the watch, in the house;
+and there are some footsteps--I won't say whose--so soft, that no
+person can hear them."
+
+The last allusion evidently made itself understood. Naomi stopped him
+before he could say more.
+
+"Well, where is it to be?" she asked, resignedly. "Will the garden do,
+Mr. John?"
+
+"Thank you kindly, miss; the garden will do." He pointed to a
+gravel-walk beyond us, bathed in the full flood of the moonlight.
+"There," he said, "where we can see all round us, and be sure that
+nobody is listening. At ten o'clock." He paused, and addressed himself
+to me. "I beg to apologize, sir, for intruding myself on your
+conversation. Please to excuse me."
+
+His eyes rested with a last anxious, pleading look on Naomi's face. He
+bowed to us, and melted away into the shadow of the tree. The distant
+sound of a door closed softly came to us through the stillness of the
+night. John Jago had re-entered the house.
+
+Now that he was out of hearing, Naomi spoke to me very earnestly:
+
+"Don't suppose, sir, I have any secrets with _him_," she said. "I know
+no more than you do what he wants with me. I have half a mind not to
+keep the appointment when ten o'clock comes. What would you do in my
+place?"
+
+"Having made the appointment," I answered, "it seems to be due to
+yourself to keep it. If you feel the slightest alarm, I will wait in
+another part of the garden, so that I can hear if you call me."
+
+She received my proposal with a saucy toss of the head, and a smile of
+pity for my ignorance.
+
+"You are a stranger, Mr. Lefrank, or you would never talk to me in that
+way. In America, we don't do the men the honor of letting them alarm
+us. In America, the women take care of themselves. He has got my
+promise to meet him, as you say; and I must keep my promise. Only
+think," she added, speaking more to herself than to me, "of John Jago
+finding out Miss Meadowcroft's nasty, sly, underhand ways in the house!
+Most men would never have noticed her."
+
+I was completely taken by surprise. Sad and severe Miss Meadowcroft a
+listener and a spy! What next at Morwick Farm?
+
+"Was that hint at the watchful eyes and ears, and the soft footsteps,
+really an allusion to Mr. Meadowcroft's daughter?" I asked.
+
+"Of course it was. Ah! she has imposed on you as she imposes on
+everybody else. The false wretch! She is secretly at the bottom of half
+the bad feeling among the men. I am certain of it--she keeps Mr.
+Meadowcroft's mind bitter toward the boys. Old as she is, Mr. Lefrank,
+and ugly as she is, she wouldn't object (if she could only make him ask
+her) to be John Jago's second wife. No, sir; and she wouldn't break her
+heart if the boys were not left a stick or a stone on the farm when the
+father dies. I have watched her, and I know it. Ah! I could tell you
+such things! But there's no time now--it's close on ten o'clock; we
+must say good-night. I am right glad I have spoken to you, sir. I say
+again, at parting, what I have said already: Use your influence, pray
+use your influence, to soften them, and to make them ashamed of
+themselves, in this wicked house. We will have more talk about what you
+can do to-morrow, when you are shown over the farm. Say good-by now.
+Hark! there is ten striking! And look! here is John Jago stealing out
+again in the shadow of the tree! Good-night, friend Lefrank; and
+pleasant dreams."
+
+With one hand she took mine, and pressed it cordially; with the other
+she pushed me away without ceremony in the direction of the house. A
+charming girl--an irresistible girl! I was nearly as bad as the boys. I
+declare, _I_ almost hated John Jago, too, as we crossed each other in
+the shadow of the tree.
+
+Arrived at the glass door, I stopped and looked back at the gravel-walk.
+
+They had met. I saw the two shadowy figures slowly pacing backward and
+forward in the moonlight, the woman a little in advance of the man.
+What was he saying to her? Why was he so anxious that not a word of it
+should be heard? Our presentiments are sometimes, in certain rare
+cases, the faithful prophecy of the future. A vague distrust of that
+moonlight meeting stealthily took a hold on my mind. "Will mischief
+come of it?" I asked myself as I closed the door and entered the house.
+
+Mischief _did_ come of it. You shall hear how.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. 
+
+THE BEECHEN STICK.
+
+PERSONS of sensitive, nervous temperament, sleeping for the first time
+in a strange house, and in a bed that is new to them, must make up
+their minds to pass a wakeful night. My first night at Morwick Farm was
+no exception to this rule. The little sleep I had was broken and
+disturbed by dreams. Toward six o'clock in the morning, my bed became
+unendurable to me. The sun was shining in brightly at the window. I
+determined to try the reviving influence of a stroll in the fresh
+morning air.
+
+Just as I got out of bed, I heard footsteps and voices under my window.
+
+The footsteps stopped, and the voices became recognizable. I had passed
+the night with my window open; I was able, without exciting notice from
+below, to look out.
+
+The persons beneath me were Silas Meadowcroft, John Jago, and three
+strangers, whose dress and appearance indicated plainly enough that
+they were laborers on the farm. Silas was swinging a stout beechen
+stick in his hand, and was speaking to Jago, coarsely and insolently
+enough, of his moonlight meeting with Naomi on the previous night.
+
+"Next time you go courting a young lady in secret," said Silas, "make
+sure that the moon goes down first, or wait for a cloudy sky. You were
+seen in the garden, Master Jago; and you may as well tell us the truth
+for once in a way. Did you find her open to persuasion, sir? Did she
+say 'Yes?'"
+
+John Jago kept his temper.
+
+"If you must have your joke, Mr. Silas," he said, quietly and firmly,
+"be pleased to joke on some other subject. You are quite wrong, sir, in
+what you suppose to have passed between the young lady and me."
+
+Silas turned about, and addressed himself ironically to the three
+laborers.
+
+"You hear him, boys? He can't tell the truth, try him as you may. He
+wasn't making love to Naomi in the garden last night--oh dear, no! He
+has had one wife already; and he knows better than to take the yoke on
+his shoulders for the second time!"
+
+Greatly to my surprise, John Jago met this clumsy jesting with a formal
+and serious reply.
+
+"You are quite right, sir," he said. "I have no intention of marrying
+for the second time. What I was saying to Miss Naomi doesn't matter to
+you. It was not at all what you choose to suppose; it was something of
+quite another kind, with which you have no concern. Be pleased to
+understand once for all, Mr. Silas, that not so much as the thought of
+making love to the young lady has ever entered my head. I respect her;
+I admire her good qualities; but if she was the only woman left in the
+world, and if I was a much younger man than I am, I should never think
+of asking her to be my wife." He burst out suddenly into a harsh,
+uneasy laugh. "No, no! not my style, Mr. Silas--not my style!"
+
+Something in those words, or in his manner of speaking them, appeared
+to exasperate Silas. He dropped his clumsy irony, and addressed himself
+directly to John Jago in a tone of savage contempt.
+
+"Not your style?" he repeated. "Upon my soul, that's a cool way of
+putting it, for a man in your place! What do you mean by calling her
+'not your style?' You impudent beggar! Naomi Colebrook is meat for your
+master!"
+
+John Jago's temper began to give way at last. He approached defiantly a
+step or two nearer to Silas Meadowcroft.
+
+"Who is my master?" he asked.
+
+"Ambrose will show you, if you go to him," answered the other. "Naomi
+is _his_ sweetheart, not mine. Keep out of his way, if you want to keep
+a whole skin on your bones."
+
+John Jago cast one of his sardonic side-looks at the farmer's wounded
+left hand. "Don't forget your own skin, Mr. Silas, when you threaten
+mine! I have set my mark on you once, sir. Let me by on my business, or
+I may mark you for a second time."
+
+Silas lifted his beechen stick. The laborers, roused to some rude sense
+of the serious turn which the quarrel was taking, got between the two
+men, and parted them. I had been hurriedly dressing myself while the
+altercation was proceeding; and I now ran downstairs to try what my
+influence could do toward keeping the peace at Morwick Farm.
+
+The war of angry words was still going on when I joined the men
+outside.
+
+"Be off with you on your business, you cowardly hound!" I heard Silas
+say. "Be off with you to the town! and take care you don't meet Ambrose
+on the way!"
+
+"Take _you_ care you don't feel my knife again before I go!" cried the
+other man.
+
+Silas made a desperate effort to break away from the laborers who were
+holding him.
+
+"Last time you only felt my fist!" he shouted "Next time you shall feel
+_this!_"
+
+He lifted the stick as he spoke. I stepped up and snatched it out of
+his hand.
+
+"Mr. Silas," I said, "I am an invalid, and I am going out for a walk.
+Your stick will be useful to me. I beg leave to borrow it."
+
+The laborers burst out laughing. Silas fixed his eyes on me with a
+stare of angry surprise. John Jago, immediately recovering his
+self-possession, took off his hat, and made me a deferential bow.
+
+"I had no idea, Mr. Lefrank, that we were disturbing you," he said. "I
+am very much ashamed of myself, sir. I beg to apologize."
+
+"I accept your apology, Mr. Jago," I answered, "on the understanding
+that you, as the older man, will set the example of forbearance if your
+temper is tried on any future occasion as it has been tried today. And
+I have further to request," I added, addressing myself to Silas, "that
+you will do me a favor, as your father's guest. The next time your good
+spirits lead you into making jokes at Mr. Jago's expense, don't carry
+them quite so far. I am sure you meant no harm, Mr. Silas. Will you
+gratify me by saying so yourself? I want to see you and Mr. Jago shake
+hands."
+
+John Jago instantly held out his hand, with an assumption of good
+feeling which was a little overacted, to my thinking. Silas Meadowcroft
+made no advance of the same friendly sort on his side.
+
+"Let him go about his business," said Silas. "I won't waste any more
+words on him, Mr. Lefrank, to please _you_. But (saving your presence)
+I'm d--d if I take his hand!"
+
+Further persuasion was plainly useless, addressed to such a man as
+this. Silas gave me no further opportunity of remonstrating with him,
+even if I had been inclined to do so. He turned about in sulky silence,
+and, retracing his steps along the path, disappeared round the corner
+of the house. The laborers withdrew next, in different directions, to
+begin the day's work. John Jago and I were alone.
+
+I left it to the man of the wild brown eyes to speak first.
+
+"In half an hour's time, sir," he said, "I shall be going on business
+to Narrabee, our market-town here. Can I take any letters to the post
+for you? or is there anything else that I can do in the town?"
+
+I thanked him, and declined both proposals. He made me another
+deferential bow, and withdrew into the house. I mechanically followed
+the path in the direction which Silas had taken before me.
+
+Turning the corner of the house, and walking on for a little way, I
+found myself at the entrance to the stables, and face to face with
+Silas Meadowcroft once more. He had his elbows on the gate of the yard,
+swinging it slowly backward and forward, and turning and twisting a
+straw between his teeth. When he saw me approaching him, he advanced a
+step from the gate, and made an effort to excuse himself, with a very
+ill grace.
+
+"No offense, mister. Ask me what you will besides, and I'll do it for
+you. But don't ask me to shake hands with John Jago; I hate him too
+badly for that. If I touched him with one hand, sir, I tell you this, I
+should throttle him with the other."
+
+"That's your feeling toward the man, Mr. Silas, is it?"
+
+"That's my feeling, Mr. Lefrank; and I'm not ashamed of it either."
+
+"Is there any such place as a church in your neighborhood, Mr. Silas?"
+
+"Of course there is."
+
+"And do you ever go to it?"
+
+"Of course I do."
+
+"At long intervals, Mr. Silas?"
+
+"Every Sunday, sir, without fail."
+
+Some third person behind me burst out laughing; some third person had
+been listening to our talk. I turned round, and discovered Ambrose
+Meadowcroft.
+
+"I understand the drift of your catechism, sir, though my brother
+doesn't," he said. "Don't be hard on Silas, sir. He isn't the only
+Christian who leaves his Christianity in the pew when he goes out of
+church. You will never make us friends with John Jago, try as you may.
+Why, what have you got there, Mr. Lefrank? May I die if it isn't my
+stick! I have been looking for it everywhere!"
+
+The thick beechen stick had been feeling uncomfortably heavy in my
+invalid hand for some time past. There was no sort of need for my
+keeping it any longer. John Jago was going away to Narrabee, and Silas
+Meadowcroft's savage temper was subdued to a sulky repose. I handed the
+stick back to Ambrose. He laughed as he took it from me.
+
+"You can't think how strange it feels, Mr. Lefrank, to be out without
+one's stick," he said. "A man gets used to his stick, sir; doesn't he?
+Are you ready for your breakfast?"
+
+"Not just yet. I thought of taking a little walk first."
+
+"All right, sir. I wish I could go with you; but I have got my work to
+do this morning, and Silas has his work too. If you go back by the way
+you came, you will find yourself in the garden. If you want to go
+further, the wicket-gate at the end will lead you into the lane."
+
+Through sheer thoughtlessness, I did a very foolish thing. I turned
+back as I was told, and left the brothers together at the gate of the
+stable-yard.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. 
+
+THE NEWS FROM NARRABEE.
+
+ARRIVED at the garden, a thought struck me. The cheerful speech and
+easy manner of Ambrose plainly indicated that he was ignorant thus far
+of the quarrel which had taken place under my window. Silas might
+confess to having taken his brother's stick, and might mention whose
+head he had threatened with it. It was not only useless, but
+undesirable, that Ambrose should know of the quarrel. I retraced my
+steps to the stable-yard. Nobody was at the gate. I called alternately
+to Silas and to Ambrose. Nobody answered. The brothers had gone away to
+their work.
+
+Returning to the garden, I heard a pleasant voice wishing me
+"Good-morning." I looked round. Naomi Colebrook was standing at one of
+the lower windows of the farm. She had her working apron on, and she
+was industriously brightening the knives for the breakfast-table on an
+old-fashioned board. A sleek black cat balanced himself on her
+shoulder, watching the flashing motion of the knife as she passed it
+rapidly to and fro on the leather-covered surface of the board.
+
+"Come here," she said; "I want to speak to you."
+
+I noticed, as I approached, that her pretty face was clouded and
+anxious. She pushed the cat irritably off her shoulder; she welcomed me
+with only the faint reflection of her bright customary smile.
+
+"I have seen John Jago," she said. "He has been hinting at something
+which he says happened under your bedroom window this morning. When I
+begged him to explain himself, he only answered, 'Ask Mr. Lefrank; I
+must be off to Narrabee.' What does it mean? Tell me right away, sir!
+I'm out of temper, and I can't wait!"
+
+Except that I made the best instead of the worst of it, I told her what
+had happened under my window as plainly as I have told it here. She put
+down the knife that she was cleaning, and folded her hands before her,
+thinking.
+
+"I wish I had never given John Jago that meeting," she said. "When a
+man asks anything of a woman, the woman, I find, mostly repents it if
+she says 'Yes.'"
+
+She made that quaint reflection with a very troubled brow. The
+moonlight meeting had left some unwelcome remembrances in her mind. I
+saw that as plainly as I saw Naomi herself.
+
+What had John Jago said to her? I put the question with all needful
+delicacy, making my apologies beforehand.
+
+"I should like to tell _you_," she began, with a strong emphasis on the
+last word.
+
+There she stopped. She turned pale; then suddenly flushed again to the
+deepest red. She took up the knife once more, and went on cleaning it
+as industriously as ever.
+
+"I mustn't tell you," she resumed, with her head down over the knife.
+"I have promised not to tell anybody. That's the truth. Forget all
+about it, sir, as soon as you can. Hush! here's the spy who saw us last
+night on the walk and who told Silas!"
+
+Dreary Miss Meadowcroft opened the kitchen door. She carried an
+ostentatiously large Prayer-Book; and she looked at Naomi as only a
+jealous woman of middle age _can_ look at a younger and prettier woman
+than herself.
+
+"Prayers, Miss Colebrook," she said in her sourest manner. She paused,
+and noticed me standing under the window. "Prayers, Mr. Lefrank," she
+added, with a look of devout pity, directed exclusively to my address.
+
+"We will follow you directly, Miss Meadowcroft," said Naomi.
+
+"I have no desire to intrude on your secrets, Miss Colebrook."
+
+With that acrid answer, our priestess took herself and her Prayer-Book
+out of the kitchen. I joined Naomi, entering the room by the garden
+door. She met me eagerly. "I am not quite easy about something," she
+said. "Did you tell me that you left Ambrose and Silas together?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Suppose Silas tells Ambrose of what happened this morning?"
+
+The same idea, as I have already mentioned, had occurred to my mind. I
+did my best to reassure Naomi.
+
+"Mr. Jago is out of the way," I replied. "You and I can easily put
+things right in his absence."
+
+She took my arm.
+
+"Come in to prayers," she said. "Ambrose will be there, and I shall
+find an opportunity of speaking to him."
+
+Neither Ambrose nor Silas was in the breakfast-room when we entered it.
+After waiting vainly for ten minutes, Mr. Meadowcroft told his daughter
+to read the prayers. Miss Meadowcroft read, thereupon, in the tone of
+an injured woman taking the throne of mercy by storm, and insisting on
+her rights. Breakfast followed; and still the brothers were absent.
+Miss Meadowcroft looked at her father, and said, "From bad to worse,
+sir. What did I tell you?" Naomi instantly applied the antidote: "The
+boys are no doubt detained over their work, uncle." She turned to me.
+"You want to see the farm, Mr. Lefrank. Come and help me to find the
+boys."
+
+For more than an hour we visited one part of the farm after another,
+without discovering the missing men. We found them at last near the
+outskirts of a small wood, sitting, talking together, on the trunk of a
+felled tree.
+
+Silas rose as we approached, and walked away, without a word of
+greeting or apology, into the wood. As he got on his feet, I noticed
+that his brother whispered something in his ear; and I heard him
+answer, "All right."
+
+"Ambrose, does that mean you have something to keep a secret from us?"
+asked Naomi, approaching her lover with a smile. "Is Silas ordered to
+hold his tongue?"
+
+Ambrose kicked sulkily at the loose stones lying about him. I noticed,
+with a certain surprise that his favorite stick was not in his hand,
+and was not lying near him.
+
+"Business," he said in answer to Naomi, not very graciously--"business
+between Silas and me. That's what it means, if you must know."
+
+Naomi went on, woman-like, with her questioning, heedless of the
+reception which they might meet with from an irritated man.
+
+"Why were you both away at prayers and breakfast-time?" she asked next.
+
+"We had too much to do," Ambrose gruffly replied, "and we were too far
+from the house."
+
+"Very odd," said Naomi. "This has never happened before since I have
+been at the farm."
+
+"Well, live and learn. It has happened now."
+
+The tone in which he spoke would have warned any man to let him alone.
+But warnings which speak by implication only are thrown away on women.
+The woman, having still something in her mind to say, said it.
+
+"Have you seen anything of John Jago this morning?"
+
+The smoldering ill-temper of Ambrose burst suddenly--why, it was
+impossible to guess--into a flame. "How many more questions am I to
+answer?" he broke out violently. "Are you the parson putting me through
+my catechism? I have seen nothing of John Jago, and I have got my work
+to go on with. Will that do for you?"
+
+He turned with an oath, and followed his brother into the wood. Naomi's
+bright eyes looked up at me, flashing with indignation.
+
+"What does he mean, Mr. Lefrank, by speaking to me in that way? Rude
+brute! How dare he do it?" She paused; her voice, look and manner
+suddenly changed. "This has never happened before, sir. Has anything
+gone wrong? I declare, I shouldn't know Ambrose again, he is so
+changed. Say, how does it strike you?"
+
+I still made the best of a bad case.
+
+"Something has upset his temper," I said. "The merest trifle, Miss
+Colebrook, upsets a man's temper sometimes. I speak as a man, and I
+know it. Give him time, and he will make his excuses, and all will be
+well again."
+
+My presentation of the case entirely failed to re-assure my pretty
+companion. We went back to the house. Dinner-time came, and the
+brothers appeared. Their father spoke to them of their absence from
+morning prayers with needless severity, as I thought. They resented the
+reproof with needless indignation on their side, and left the room. A
+sour smile of satisfaction showed itself on Miss Meadowcroft's thin
+lips. She looked at her father; then raised her eyes sadly to the
+ceiling, and said, "We can only pray for them, sir."
+
+Naomi disappeared after dinner. When I saw her again, she had some news
+for me.
+
+"I have been with Ambrose," she said, "and he has begged my pardon. We
+have made it up, Mr. Lefrank. Still--still--"
+
+"Still--_what_, Miss Naomi?"
+
+"He is not like himself, sir. He denies it; but I can't help thinking
+he is hiding something from me."
+
+The day wore on; the evening came. I returned to my French novel. But
+not even Dumas himself could keep my attention to the story. What else
+I was thinking of I cannot say. Why I was out of spirits I am unable to
+explain. I wished myself back in England: I took a blind, unreasoning
+hatred to Morwick Farm.
+
+Nine o'clock struck; and we all assembled again at supper, with the
+exception of John Jago. He was expected back to supper; and we waited
+for him a quarter of an hour, by Mr. Meadowcroft's own directions. John
+Jago never appeared.
+
+The night wore on, and still the absent man failed to return. Miss
+Meadowcroft volunteered to sit up for him. Naomi eyed her, a little
+maliciously I must own, as the two women parted for the night. I
+withdrew to my room; and again I was unable to sleep. When sunrise
+came, I went out, as before, to breathe the morning air.
+
+On the staircase I met Miss Meadowcroft ascending to her own room. Not
+a curl of her stiff gray hair was disarranged; nothing about the
+impenetrable woman betrayed that she had been watching through the
+night.
+
+"Has Mr. Jago not returned?" I asked.
+
+Miss Meadowcroft slowly shook her head, and frowned at me.
+
+"We are in the hands of Providence, Mr. Lefrank. Mr. Jago must have
+been detained for the night at Narrabee."
+
+The daily routine of the meals resumed its unalterable course.
+Breakfast-time came, and dinner-time came, and no John Jago darkened
+the doors of Morwick Farm. Mr. Meadowcroft and his daughter consulted
+together, and determined to send in search of the missing man. One of
+the more intelligent of the laborers was dispatched to Narrabee to make
+inquiries.
+
+The man returned late in the evening, bringing startling news to the
+farm. He had visited all the inns, and all the places of business
+resort in Narrabee; he had made endless inquiries in every direction,
+with this result--no one had set eyes on John Jago. Everybody declared
+that John Jago had not entered the town.
+
+We all looked at each other, excepting the two brothers, who were
+seated together in a dark corner of the room. The conclusion appeared
+to be inevitable. John Jago was a lost man.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. 
+
+THE LIME-KILN.
+
+MR. MEADOWCROFT was the first to speak. "Somebody must find John," he
+said.
+
+"Without losing a moment," added his daughter.
+
+Ambrose suddenly stepped out of the dark corner of the room.
+
+"_I_ will inquire," he said.
+
+Silas followed him.
+
+"I will go with you," he added.
+
+Mr. Meadowcroft interposed his authority.
+
+"One of you will be enough; for the present, at least. Go you, Ambrose.
+Your brother may be wanted later. If any accident has happened (which
+God forbid!) we may have to inquire in more than one direction. Silas,
+you will stay at the farm."
+
+The brothers withdrew together; Ambrose to prepare for his journey,
+Silas to saddle one of the horses for him. Naomi slipped out after
+them. Left in company with Mr. Meadowcroft and his daughter (both
+devoured by anxiety about the missing man, and both trying to conceal
+it under an assumption of devout resignation to circumstances), I need
+hardly add that I, too, retired, as soon as it was politely possible
+for me to leave the room. Ascending the stairs on my way to my own
+quarters, I discovered Naomi half hidden by the recess formed by an
+old-fashioned window-seat on the first landing. My bright little friend
+was in sore trouble. Her apron was over her face, and she was crying
+bitterly. Ambrose had not taken his leave as tenderly as usual. She was
+more firmly persuaded than ever that "Ambrose was hiding something from
+her." We all waited anxiously for the next day. The next day made the
+mystery deeper than ever.
+
+The horse which had taken Ambrose to Narrabee was ridden back to the
+farm by a groom from the hotel. He delivered a written message from
+Ambrose which startled us. Further inquiries had positively proved that
+the missing man had never been near Narrabee. The only attainable
+tidings of his whereabouts were tidings derived from vague report. It
+was said that a man like John Jago had been seen the previous day in a
+railway car, traveling on the line to New York. Acting on this
+imperfect information, Ambrose had decided on verifying the truth of
+the report by extending his inquiries to New York.
+
+This extraordinary proceeding forced the suspicion on me that something
+had really gone wrong. I kept my doubts to myself; but I was prepared,
+from that moment, to see the disappearance of John Jago followed by
+very grave results.
+
+The same day the results declared themselves.
+
+Time enough had now elapsed for report to spread through the district
+the news of what had happened at the farm. Already aware of the bad
+feeling existing between the men, the neighbors had been now informed
+(no doubt by the laborers present) of the deplorable scene that had
+taken place under my bedroom window. Public opinion declares itself in
+America without the slightest reserve, or the slightest care for
+consequences. Public opinion declared on this occasion that the lost
+man was the victim of foul play, and held one or both of the brothers
+Meadowcroft responsible for his disappearance. Later in the day, the
+reasonableness of this serious view of the case was confirmed in the
+popular mind by a startling discovery. It was announced that a
+Methodist preacher lately settled at Morwick, and greatly respected
+throughout the district, had dreamed of John Jago in the character of a
+murdered man, whose bones were hidden at Morwick Farm. Before night the
+cry was general for a verification of the preacher's dream. Not only in
+the immediate district, but in the town of Narrabee itself, the public
+voice insisted on the necessity of a search for the mortal remains of
+John Jago at Morwick Farm.
+
+In the terrible turn which matters had now taken, Mr. Meadowcroft the
+elder displayed a spirit and an energy for which I was not prepared.
+
+"My sons have their faults," he said, "serious faults; and nobody knows
+it better than I do. My sons have behaved badly and ungratefully toward
+John Jago; I don't deny that, either. But Ambrose and Silas are not
+murderers. Make your search! I ask for it; no, I insist on it, after
+what has been said, in justice to my family and my name!"
+
+The neighbors took him at his word. The Morwick section of the American
+nation organized itself on the spot. The sovereign people met in
+committee, made speeches, elected competent persons to represent the
+public interests, and began the search the next day. The whole
+proceeding, ridiculously informal from a legal point of view, was
+carried on by these extraordinary people with as stern and strict a
+sense of duty as if it had been sanctioned by the highest tribunal in
+the land.
+
+Naomi met the calamity that had fallen on the household as resolutely
+as her uncle himself. The girl's courage rose with the call which was
+made on it. Her one anxiety was for Ambrose.
+
+"He ought to be here," she said to me. "The wretches in this
+neighborhood are wicked enough to say that his absence is a confession
+of his guilt."
+
+She was right. In the present temper of the popular mind, the absence
+of Ambrose was a suspicious circumstance in itself.
+
+"We might telegraph to New York," I suggested, "if you only knew where
+a message would be likely to find him."
+
+"I know the hotel which the Meadowcrofts use at New York," she replied.
+"I was sent there, after my father's death, to wait till Miss
+Meadowcroft could take me to Morwick."
+
+We decided on telegraphing to the hotel. I was writing the message, and
+Naomi was looking over my shoulder, when we were startled by a strange
+voice speaking close behind us.
+
+"Oh! that's his address, is it?" said the voice. "We wanted his address
+rather badly."
+
+The speaker was a stranger to me. Naomi recognized him as one of the
+neighbors.
+
+"What do you want his address for?" she asked, sharply.
+
+"I guess we've found the mortal remains of John Jago, miss," the man
+replied. "We have got Silas already, and we want Ambrose too, on
+suspicion of murder."
+
+"It's a lie!" cried Naomi, furiously--"a wicked lie!"
+
+The man turned to me.
+
+"Take her into the next room, mister," he said, "and let her see for
+herself."
+
+We went together into the next room.
+
+In one corner, sitting by her father, and holding his hand, we saw
+stern and stony Miss Meadowcroft weeping silently. Opposite to them,
+crouched on the window-seat, his eyes wandering, his hands hanging
+helpless, we next discovered Silas Meadowcroft, plainly self-betrayed
+as a panic-stricken man. A few of the persons who had been engaged in
+the search were seated near, watching him. The mass of the strangers
+present stood congregated round a table in the middle of the room They
+drew aside as I approached with Naomi and allowed us to have a clear
+view of certain objects placed on the table.
+
+The center object of the collection was a little heap of charred bones.
+Round this were ranged a knife, two metal buttons, and a stick
+partially burned. The knife was recognized by the laborers as the
+weapon John Jago habitually carried about with him--the weapon with
+which he had wounded Silas Meadowcroft's hand. The buttons Naomi
+herself declared to have a peculiar pattern on them, which had formerly
+attracted her attention to John Jago's coat. As for the stick, burned
+as it was, I had no difficulty in identifying the quaintly-carved knob
+at the top. It was the heavy beechen stick which I had snatched out of
+Silas's hand, and which I had restored to Ambrose on his claiming it as
+his own. In reply to my inquiries, I was informed that the bones, the
+knife, the buttons and the stick had all been found together in a
+lime-kiln then in use on the farm.
+
+"Is it serious?" Naomi whispered to me as we drew back from the table.
+
+It would have been sheer cruelty to deceive her now.
+
+"Yes," I whispered back; "it is serious."
+
+The search committee conducted its proceedings with the strictest
+regularity. The proper applications were made forthwith to a justice of
+the peace, and the justice issued his warrant. That night Silas was
+committed to prison; and an officer was dispatched to arrest Ambrose in
+New York.
+
+For my part, I did the little I could to make myself useful. With the
+silent sanction of Mr. Meadowcroft and his daughter, I went to
+Narrabee, and secured the best legal assistance for the defense which
+the town could place at my disposal. This done, there was no choice but
+to wait for news of Ambrose, and for the examination before the
+magistrate which was to follow. I shall pass over the misery in the
+house during the interval of expectation; no useful purpose could be
+served by describing it now. Let me only say that Naomi's conduct
+strengthened me in the conviction that she possessed a noble nature. I
+was unconscious of the state of my own feelings at the time; but I am
+now disposed to think that this was the epoch at which I began to envy
+Ambrose the wife whom he had won.
+
+The telegraph brought us our first news of Ambrose. He had been
+arrested at the hotel, and he was on his way to Morwick. The next day
+he arrived, and followed his brother to prison. The two were confined
+in separate cells, and were forbidden all communication with each
+other.
+
+Two days later, the preliminary examination took place. Ambrose and
+Silas Meadowcroft were charged before the magistrate with the willful
+murder of John Jago. I was cited to appear as one of the witnesses;
+and, at Naomi's own request, I took the poor girl into court, and sat
+by her during the proceedings. My host also was present in his
+invalid-chair, with his daughter by his side.
+
+Such was the result of my voyage across the ocean in search of rest and
+quiet; and thus did time and chance fulfill my first hasty foreboding
+of the dull life I was to lead at Morwick Farm!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. 
+
+THE MATERIALS IN THE DEFENSE.
+
+ON our way to the chairs allotted to us in the magistrate's court, we
+passed the platform on which the prisoners were standing together.
+
+Silas took no notice of us. Ambrose made a friendly sign of
+recognition, and then rested his hand on the "bar" in front of him. As
+she passed beneath him, Naomi was just tall enough to reach his hand on
+tiptoe. She took it. "I know you are innocent," she whispered, and gave
+him one look of loving encouragement as she followed me to her place.
+Ambrose never lost his self-control. I may have been wrong; but I
+thought this a bad sign.
+
+The case, as stated for the prosecution, told strongly against the
+suspected men.
+
+Ambrose and Silas Meadowcroft were charged with the murder of John Jago
+(by means of the stick or by use of some other weapon), and with the
+deliberate destruction of the body by throwing it into the quicklime.
+In proof of this latter assertion, the knife which the deceased
+habitually carried about him, and the metal buttons which were known to
+belong to his coat, were produced. It was argued that these
+indestructible substances, and some fragments of the larger bones had
+alone escaped the action of the burning lime. Having produced medical
+witnesses to support this theory by declaring the bones to be human,
+and having thus circumstantially asserted the discovery of the remains
+in the kiln, the prosecution next proceeded to prove that the missing
+man had been murdered by the two brothers, and had been by them thrown
+into the quicklime as a means of concealing their guilt.
+
+Witness after witness deposed to the inveterate enmity against the
+deceased displayed by Ambrose and Silas. The threatening language they
+habitually used toward him; their violent quarrels with him, which had
+become a public scandal throughout the neighborhood, and which had
+ended (on one occasion at least) in a blow; the disgraceful scene which
+had taken place under my window; and the restoration to Ambrose, on the
+morning of the fatal quarrel, of the very stick which had been found
+among the remains of the dead man--these facts and events, and a host
+of minor circumstances besides, sworn to by witnesses whose credit was
+unimpeachable, pointed with terrible directness to the conclusion at
+which the prosecution had arrived.
+
+I looked at the brothers as the weight of the evidence pressed more and
+more heavily against them. To outward view at least, Ambrose still
+maintained his self-possession. It was far otherwise with Silas. Abject
+terror showed itself in his ghastly face; in his great knotty hands,
+clinging convulsively to the bar at which he stood; in his staring
+eyes, fixed in vacant horror on each witness who appeared. Public
+feeling judged him on the spot. There he stood, self-betrayed already,
+in the popular opinion, as a guilty man!
+
+The one point gained in cross-examination by the defense related to the
+charred bones.
+
+Pressed on this point, a majority of the medical witnesses admitted
+that their examination had been a hurried one; and that it was just
+possible that the bones might yet prove to be the remains of an animal,
+and not of a man. The presiding magistrate decided upon this that a
+second examination should be made, and that the member of the medical
+experts should be increased.
+
+Here the preliminary proceedings ended. The prisoners were remanded for
+three days.
+
+The prostration of Silas, at the close of the inquiry, was so complete,
+that it was found necessary to have two men to support him on his
+leaving the court. Ambrose leaned over the bar to speak to Naomi before
+he followed the jailer out. "Wait," he whispered, confidently, "till
+they hear what I have to say!" Naomi kissed her hand to him
+affectionately, and turned to me with the bright tears in her eyes.
+
+"Why don't they hear what he has to say at once?" she asked. "Anybody
+can see that Ambrose is innocent. It's a crying shame, sir, to send him
+back to prison. Don't you think so yourself?"
+
+If I had confessed what I really thought, I should have said that
+Ambrose had proved nothing to my mind, except that he possessed rare
+powers of self-control. It was impossible to acknowledge this to my
+little friend. I diverted her mind from the question of her lover's
+innocence by proposing that we should get the necessary order, and
+visit him in his prison on the next day. Naomi dried her tears, and
+gave me a little grateful squeeze of the hand.
+
+"Oh my! what a good fellow you are!" cried the outspoken American girl.
+"When your time comes to be married, sir, I guess the woman won't
+repent saying yes to _you!_"
+
+Mr. Meadowcroft preserved unbroken silence as we walked back to the
+farm on either side of his invalid-chair. His last reserves of
+resolution seemed to have given way under the overwhelming strain laid
+on them by the proceedings in court. His daughter, in stern indulgence
+to Naomi, mercifully permitted her opinion to glimmer on us only
+through the medium of quotation from Scripture texts. If the texts
+meant anything, they meant that she had foreseen all that had happened;
+and that the one sad aspect of the case, to her mind, was the death of
+John Jago, unprepared to meet his end.
+
+I obtained the order of admission to the prison the next morning.
+
+We found Ambrose still confident of the favorable result, for his
+brother and for himself, of the inquiry before the magistrate. He
+seemed to be almost as eager to tell, as Naomi was to hear, the true
+story of what had happened at the lime-kiln. The authorities of the
+prison--present, of course, at the interview--warned him to remember
+that what he said might be taken down in writing, and produced against
+him in court.
+
+"Take it down, gentlemen, and welcome," Ambrose replied. "I have
+nothing to fear; I am only telling the truth."
+
+With that he turned to Naomi, and began his narrative, as nearly as I
+can remember, in these words:
+
+"I may as well make a clean breast of it at starting, my girl. After
+Mr. Lefrank left us that morning, I asked Silas how he came by my
+stick. In telling me how, Silas also told me of the words that had
+passed between him and John Jago under Mr. Lefrank's window. I was
+angry and jealous; and I own it freely, Naomi, I thought the worst that
+could be thought about you and John."
+
+Here Naomi stopped him without ceremony.
+
+"Was that what made you speak to me as you spoke when we found you at
+the wood?" she asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And was that what made you leave me, when you went away to Narrabee,
+without giving me a kiss at parting?"
+
+"It was."
+
+"Beg my pardon for it before you say a word more."
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+"Say you are ashamed of yourself."
+
+"I am ashamed of myself," Ambrose answered penitently.
+
+"Now you may go on," said Naomi. "Now I'm satisfied."
+
+Ambrose went on.
+
+"We were on our way to the clearing at the other side of the wood while
+Silas was talking to me; and, as ill luck would have it, we took the
+path that led by the lime-kiln. Turning the corner, we met John Jago on
+his way to Narrabee. I was too angry, I tell you, to let him pass
+quietly. I gave him a bit of my mind. His blood was up too, I suppose;
+and he spoke out, on his side, as freely as I did. I own I threatened
+him with the stick; but I'll swear to it I meant him no harm. You
+know--after dressing Silas's hand--that John Jago is ready with his
+knife. He comes from out West, where they are always ready with one
+weapon or another handy in their pockets. It's likely enough he didn't
+mean to harm me, either; but how could I be sure of that? When he
+stepped up to me, and showed his weapon, I dropped the stick, and
+closed with him. With one hand I wrenched the knife away from him; and
+with the other I caught him by the collar of his rotten old coat, and
+gave him a shaking that made his bones rattle in his skin. A big piece
+of the cloth came away in my hand. I shied it into the quicklime close
+by us, and I pitched the knife after the cloth; and, if Silas hadn't
+stopped me, I think it's likely I might have shied John Jago himself
+into the lime next. As it was, Silas kept hold of me. Silas shouted out
+to him, 'Be off with you! and don't come back again, if you don't want
+to be burned in the kiln!' He stood looking at us for a minute,
+fetching his breath, and holding his torn coat round him. Then he spoke
+with a deadly-quiet voice and a deadly-quiet look: 'Many a true word,
+Mr. Silas,' he says, 'is spoken in jest. _I shall not come back
+again_.' He turned about, and left us. We stood staring at each other
+like a couple of fools. 'You don't think he means it?' I says. 'Bosh!'
+says Silas. 'He's too sweet on Naomi not to come back.' What's the
+matter now, Naomi?"
+
+I had noticed it too. She started and turned pale, when Ambrose
+repeated to her what Silas had said to him.
+
+"Nothing is the matter," Naomi answered. "Your brother has no right to
+take liberties with my name. Go on. Did Silas say any more while he was
+about it?"
+
+"Yes; he looked into the kiln; and he says, 'What made you throw away
+the knife, Ambrose?'--'How does a man know why he does anything,' I
+says, 'when he does it in a passion?'--'It's a ripping good knife,'
+says Silas; 'in your place, I should have kept it.' I picked up the
+stick off the ground. 'Who says I've lost it yet?' I answered him; and
+with that I got up on the side of the kiln, and began sounding for the
+knife, to bring it, you know, by means of the stick, within easy reach
+of a shovel, or some such thing. 'Give us your hand,' I says to Silas.
+'Let me stretch out a bit and I'll have it in no time.' Instead of
+finding the knife, I came nigh to falling myself into the burning lime.
+The vapor overpowered me, I suppose. All I know is, I turned giddy, and
+dropped the stick in the kiln. I should have followed the stick to a
+dead certainty, but for Silas pulling me back by the hand. 'Let it be,'
+says Silas. 'If I hadn't had hold of you, John Jago's knife would have
+been the death of you, after all!' He led me away by the arm, and we
+went on together on the road to the wood. We stopped where you found
+us, and sat down on the felled tree. We had a little more talk about
+John Jago. It ended in our agreeing to wait and see what happened, and
+to keep our own counsel in the meantime. You and Mr. Lefrank came upon
+us, Naomi, while we were still talking; and you guessed right when you
+guessed that we had a secret from you. You know the secret now."
+
+There he stopped. I put a question to him--the first that I had asked
+yet.
+
+"Had you or your brother any fear at that time of the charge which has
+since been brought against you?" I said.
+
+"No such thought entered our heads, sir," Ambrose answered. "How could
+_we_ foresee that the neighbors would search the kiln, and say what
+they have said of us? All we feared was, that the old man might hear of
+the quarrel, and be bitterer against us than ever. I was the more
+anxious of the two to keep things secret, because I had Naomi to
+consider as well as the old man. Put yourself in my place, and you will
+own, sir, that the prospect at home was not a pleasant one for _me_, if
+John Jago really kept away from the farm, and if it came out that it
+was all my doing."
+
+(This was certainly an explanation of his conduct; but it was not
+satisfactory to my mind.)
+
+"As _you_ believe, then," I went on, "John Jago has carried out his
+threat of not returning to the farm? According to you, he is now alive,
+and in hiding somewhere?"
+
+"Certainly!" said Ambrose.
+
+"Certainly!" repeated Naomi.
+
+"Do you believe the report that he was seen traveling on the railway to
+New York?"
+
+"I believe it firmly, sir; and, what is more, I believe I was on his
+track. I was only too anxious to find him; and I say I could have found
+him if they would have let me stay in New York."
+
+I looked at Naomi.
+
+"I believe it too," she said. "John Jago is keeping away."
+
+"Do you suppose he is afraid of Ambrose and Silas?"
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"He _may_ be afraid of them," she replied, with a strong emphasis on
+the word "may."
+
+"But you don't think it likely?"
+
+She hesitated again. I pressed her again.
+
+"Do you think there is any other motive for his absence?"
+
+Her eyes dropped to the floor. She answered obstinately, almost
+doggedly,
+
+"I can't say."
+
+I addressed myself to Ambrose.
+
+"Have you anything more to tell us?" I asked.
+
+"No," he said. "I have told you all I know about it."
+
+I rose to speak to the lawyer whose services I had retained. He had
+helped us to get the order of admission, and he had accompanied us to
+the prison. Seated apart he had kept silence throughout, attentively
+watching the effect of Ambrose Meadowcroft's narrative on the officers
+of the prison and on me.
+
+"Is this the defense?" I inquired, in a whisper.
+
+"This is the defense, Mr. Lefrank. What do you think, between
+ourselves?"
+
+"Between ourselves, I think the magistrate will commit them for trial."
+
+"On the charge of murder?"
+
+"Yes, on the charge of murder."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. 
+
+THE CONFESSION.
+
+MY replies to the lawyer accurately expressed the conviction in my
+mind. The narrative related by Ambrose had all the appearance, in my
+eyes, of a fabricated story, got up, and clumsily got up, to pervert
+the plain meaning of the circumstantial evidence produced by the
+prosecution. I reached this conclusion reluctantly and regretfully, for
+Naomi's sake. I said all I could say to shake the absolute confidence
+which she felt in the discharge of the prisoners at the next
+examination.
+
+The day of the adjourned inquiry arrived.
+
+Naomi and I again attended the court together. Mr. Meadowcroft was
+unable, on this occasion, to leave the house. His daughter was present,
+walking to the court by herself, and occupying a seat by herself.
+
+On his second appearance at the "bar," Silas was more composed, and
+more like his brother. No new witnesses were called by the prosecution.
+We began the battle over the medical evidence relating to the charred
+bones; and, to some extent, we won the victory. In other words, we
+forced the doctors to acknowledge that they differed widely in their
+opinions. Three confessed that they were not certain. Two went still
+further, and declared that the bones were the bones of an animal, not
+of a man. We made the most of this; and then we entered upon the
+defense, founded on Ambrose Meadowcroft's story.
+
+Necessarily, no witnesses could be called on our side. Whether this
+circumstance discouraged him, or whether he privately shared my opinion
+of his client's statement, I cannot say. It is only certain that the
+lawyer spoke mechanically, doing his best, no doubt, but doing it
+without genuine conviction or earnestness on his own part. Naomi cast
+an anxious glance at me as he sat down. The girl's hand, as I took it,
+turned cold in mine. She saw plain signs of the failure of the defense
+in the look and manner of the counsel for the prosecution; but she
+waited resolutely until the presiding magistrate announced his
+decision. I had only too clearly foreseen what he would feel it to be
+his duty to do. Naomi's head dropped on my shoulder as he said the
+terrible words which committed Ambrose and Silas Meadowcroft to take
+their trial on the charge of murder.
+
+I led her out of the court into the air. As I passed the "bar," I saw
+Ambrose, deadly pale, looking after us as we left him: the magistrate's
+decision had evidently daunted him. His brother Silas had dropped in
+abject terror on the jailer's chair; the miserable wretch shook and
+shuddered dumbly, like a cowed dog.
+
+Miss Meadowcroft returned with us to the farm, preserving unbroken
+silence on the way back. I could detect nothing in her bearing which
+suggested any compassionate feeling for the prisoners in her stern and
+secret nature. On Naomi's withdrawal to her own room, we were left
+together for a few minutes; and then, to my astonishment, the outwardly
+merciless woman showed me that she, too, was one of Eve's daughters,
+and could feel and suffer, in her own hard way, like the rest of us.
+She suddenly stepped close up to me, and laid her hand on my arm.
+
+"You are a lawyer, ain't you?" she asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you had any experience in your profession?"
+
+"Ten years' experience."
+
+"Do _you_ think--" She stopped abruptly; her hard face softened; her
+eyes dropped to the ground. "Never mind," she said, confusedly. "I'm
+upset by all this misery, though I may not look like it. Don't notice
+me."
+
+She turned away. I waited, in the firm persuasion that the unspoken
+question in her mind would sooner or later force its way to utterance
+by her lips. I was right. She came back to me unwillingly, like a woman
+acting under some influence which the utmost exertion of her will was
+powerless to resist.
+
+"Do _you_ believe John Jago is still a living man?"
+
+She put the question vehemently, desperately, as if the words rushed
+out of her mouth in spite of her.
+
+"I do _not_ believe it," I answered.
+
+"Remember what John Jago has suffered at the hands of my brothers," she
+persisted. "Is it not in your experience that he should take a sudden
+resolution to leave the farm?"
+
+I replied, as plainly as before,
+
+"It is _not_ in my experience."
+
+She stood looking at me for a moment with a face of blank despair; then
+bowed her gray head in silence, and left me. As she crossed the room to
+the door, I saw her look upward; and I heard her say to herself softly,
+between her teeth, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord."
+
+It was the requiem of John Jago, pronounced by the woman who loved him.
+
+When I next saw her, her mask was on once more. Miss Meadowcroft was
+herself again. Miss Meadowcroft could sit by, impenetrably calm, while
+the lawyers discussed the terrible position of her brothers, with the
+scaffold in view as one of the possibilities of the "case."
+
+Left by myself, I began to feel uneasy about Naomi. I went upstairs,
+and, knocking softly at her door, made my inquiries from outside. The
+clear young voice answered me sadly, "I am trying to bear it: I won't
+distress you when we meet again." I descended the stairs, feeling my
+first suspicion of the true nature of my interest in the American girl.
+Why had her answer brought the tears into my eyes? I went out, walking
+alone, to think undisturbedly. Why did the tones of her voice dwell on
+my ear all the way? Why did my hand still feel the last cold, faint
+pressure of her fingers when I led her out of court?
+
+I took a sudden resolution to go back to England.
+
+When I returned to the farm, it was evening. The lamp was not yet
+lighted in the hall. Pausing to accustom my eyes to the obscurity
+indoors, I heard the voice of the lawyer whom we had employed for the
+defense speaking to some one very earnestly.
+
+"I'm not to blame," said the voice. "She snatched the paper out of my
+hand before I was aware of her."
+
+"Do you want it back?" asked the voice of Miss Meadowcroft.
+
+"No; it's only a copy. If keeping it will help to quiet her, let her keep
+it by all means. Good evening."
+
+Saying these last words, the lawyer approached me on his way out of the
+house. I stopped him without ceremony; I felt an ungovernable curiosity
+to know more.
+
+"Who snatched the paper out of your hand?" I asked, bluntly.
+
+The lawyer started. I had taken him by surprise. The instinct of
+professional reticence made him pause before he answered me.
+
+In the brief interval of silence, Miss Meadowcroft replied to my
+question from the other end of the hall.
+
+"Naomi Colebrook snatched the paper out of his hand."
+
+"What paper?"
+
+A door opened softly behind me. Naomi herself appeared on the
+threshold; Naomi herself answered my question.
+
+"I will tell you," she whispered. "Come in here."
+
+One candle only was burning in the room. I looked at her by the dim
+light. My resolution to return to England instantly became one of the
+lost ideas of my life.
+
+"Good God!" I exclaimed, "what has happened now?"
+
+She handed me the paper which she had taken from the lawyer's hand.
+
+The "copy" to which he had referred was a copy of the written
+confession of Silas Meadowcroft on his return to prison. He accused his
+brother Ambrose of the murder of John Jago. He declared on his oath
+that he had seen his brother Ambrose commit the crime.
+
+In the popular phrase, I could "hardly believe my own eyes." I read the
+last sentences of the confession for the second time:
+
+"...I heard their voices at the lime-kiln. They were having words about
+Cousin Naomi. I ran to the place to part them. I was not in time. I saw
+Ambrose strike the deceased a terrible blow on the head with his
+(Ambrose's) heavy stick. The deceased dropped without a cry. I put my
+hand on his heart. He was dead. I was horribly frightened. Ambrose
+threatened to kill _me_ next if I said a word to any living soul. He
+took up the body and cast it into the quicklime, and threw the stick in
+after it. We went on together to the wood. We sat down on a felled tree
+outside the wood. Ambrose made up the story that we were to tell if
+what he had done was found out. He made me repeat it after him, like a
+lesson. We were still at it when Cousin Naomi and Mr. Lefrank came up
+to us. They know the rest. This, on my oath, is a true confession. I
+make it of my own free-will, repenting me sincerely that I did not make
+it before."
+
+(Signed)
+
+"SILAS MEADOWCROFT."
+
+
+I laid down the paper, and looked at Naomi once more. She spoke to me
+with a strange composure. Immovable determination was in her eye;
+immovable determination was in her voice.
+
+"Silas has lied away his brother's life to save himself," she said. "I
+see cowardly falsehood and cowardly cruelty in every line on that
+paper. Ambrose is innocent, and the time has come to prove it."
+
+"You forget," I said, "that we have just failed to prove it."
+
+"John Jago is alive, in hiding from us and from all who know him," she
+went on. "Help me, friend Lefrank, to advertise for him in the
+newspapers."
+
+I drew back from her in speechless distress. I own I believed that the
+new misery which had fallen on her had affected her brain.
+
+"You don't believe it," she said. "Shut the door."
+
+I obeyed her. She seated herself, and pointed to a chair near her.
+
+"Sit down," she proceeded. "I am going to do a wrong thing; but there
+is no help for it. I am going to break a sacred promise. You remember
+that moonlight night when I met him on the garden walk?"
+
+"John Jago?"
+
+"Yes. Now listen. I am going to tell you what passed between John Jago
+and me."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. 
+
+THE ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+I WAITED in silence for the disclosure that was now to come. Naomi
+began by asking me a question.
+
+"You remember when we went to see Ambrose in the prison?" she said.
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Ambrose told us of something which his villain of a brother said of
+John Jago and me. Do you remember what it was?"
+
+I remembered perfectly. Silas had said, "John Jago is too sweet on
+Naomi not to come back."
+
+"That's so," Naomi remarked when I had repeated the words. "I couldn't
+help starting when I heard what Silas had said; and I thought you
+noticed me."
+
+"I did notice you."
+
+"Did you wonder what it meant?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'll tell you. It meant this: What Silas Meadowcroft said to his
+brother of John Jago was what I myself was thinking of John Jago at
+that very moment. It startled me to find my own thought in a man's mind
+spoken for me by a man. I am the person, sir, who has driven John Jago
+away from Morwick Farm; and I am the person who can and will bring him
+back again."
+
+There was something in her manner, more than in her words, which let
+the light in suddenly on my mind.
+
+"You have told me the secret," I said. "John Jago is in love with you."
+
+"Mad about me!" she rejoined, dropping her voice to a whisper. "Stark,
+staring mad!--that's the only word for him. After we had taken a few
+turns on the gravel-walk, he suddenly broke out like a man beside
+himself. He fell down on his knees; he kissed my gown, he kissed my
+feet; he sobbed and cried for love of me. I'm not badly off for
+courage, sir, considering I'm a woman. No man, that I can call to mind,
+ever really scared me before. But I own John Jago frightened me; oh my!
+he did frighten me! My heart was in my mouth, and my knees shook under
+me. I begged and prayed of him to get up and go away. No; there he
+knelt, and held by the skirt of my gown. The words poured out from him
+like--well, like nothing I can think of but water from a pump. His
+happiness and his life, and his hopes in earth and heaven, and Lord
+only knows what besides, all depended, he said, on a word from me. I
+plucked up spirit enough at that to remind him that I was promised to
+Ambrose. 'I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself,' I said, 'to own
+that you're wicked enough to love me when you know I am promised to
+another man!' When I spoke to him he took a new turn; he began abusing
+Ambrose. _That_ straightened me up. I snatched my gown out of his hand,
+and I gave him my whole mind. 'I hate you!' I said. 'Even if I wasn't
+promised to Ambrose, I wouldn't marry you--no! not if there wasn't
+another man left in the world to ask me. I hate you, Mr. Jago! I hate
+you!' He saw I was in earnest at last. He got up from my feet, and he
+settled down quiet again, all on a sudden. 'You have said enough' (that
+was how he answered me). 'You have broken my life. I have no hopes and
+no prospects now. I had a pride in the farm, miss, and a pride in my
+work; I bore with your brutish cousins' hatred of me; I was faithful to
+Mr. Meadowcroft's interests; all for your sake, Naomi Colebrook--all
+for your sake! I have done with it now; I have done with my life at the
+farm. You will never be troubled with me again. I am going away, as the
+dumb creatures go when they are sick, to hide myself in a corner, and
+die. Do me one last favor. Don't make me the laughing-stock of the whole
+neighborhood. I can't bear that; it maddens me only to think of it.
+Give me your promise never to tell any living soul what I have said to
+you to-night--your sacred promise to the man whose life you have
+broken!' I did as he bade me; I gave him my sacred promise with the
+tears in my eyes. Yes, that is so. After telling him I hated him (and I
+did hate him), I cried over his misery; I did! Mercy, what fools women
+are! What is the horrid perversity, sir, which makes us always ready to
+pity the men? He held out his hand to me; and he said, 'Good-by
+forever!' and I pitied him. I said, 'I'll shake hands with you if you
+will give me your promise in exchange for mine. I beg of you not to
+leave the farm. What will my uncle do if you go away? Stay here, and be
+friends with me, and forget and forgive, Mr. John.' He gave me his
+promise (he can refuse me nothing); and he gave it again when I saw him
+again the next morning. Yes. I'll do him justice, though I do hate him!
+I believe he honestly meant to keep his word as long as my eye was on
+him. It was only when he was left to himself that the Devil tempted him
+to break his promise and leave the farm. I was brought up to believe in
+the Devil, Mr. Lefrank; and I find it explains many things. It explains
+John Jago. Only let me find out where he has gone, and I'll engage he
+shall come back and clear Ambrose of the suspicion which his vile
+brother has cast on him. Here is the pen all ready for you. Advertise
+for him, friend Lefrank; and do it right away, for my sake!"
+
+I let her run on, without attempting to dispute her conclusions, until
+she could say no more. When she put the pen into my hand, I began the
+composition of the advertisement as obediently as if I, too, believed
+that John Jago was a living man.
+
+In the case of any one else, I should have openly acknowledged that my
+own convictions remained unshaken. If no quarrel had taken place at the
+lime-kiln, I should have been quite ready, as I viewed the case, to
+believe that John Jago's disappearance was referable to the terrible
+disappointment which Naomi had inflicted on him. The same morbid dread
+of ridicule which had led him to assert that he cared nothing for
+Naomi, when he and Silas had quarreled under my bedroom window, might
+also have impelled him to withdraw himself secretly and suddenly from
+the scene of his discomfiture. But to ask me to believe, after what had
+happened at the lime-kiln, that he was still living, was to ask me to
+take Ambrose Meadowcroft's statement for granted as a true statement of
+facts.
+
+I had refused to do this from the first; and I still persisted in
+taking that course. If I had been called upon to decide the balance of
+probability between the narrative related by Ambrose in his defense and
+the narrative related by Silas in his confession, I must have owned, no
+matter how unwillingly, that the confession was, to my mind, the least
+incredible story of the two.
+
+Could I say this to Naomi? I would have written fifty advertisements
+inquiring for John Jago rather than say it; and you would have done the
+same, if you had been as fond of her as I was. I drew out the
+advertisement, for insertion in the Morwick _Mercury_, in these terms:
+
+
+MURDER.--Printers of newspapers throughout the United States are
+desired to publish that Ambrose Meadowcroft and Silas Meadowcroft, of
+Morwick Farm, Morwick County, are committed for trial on the charge of
+murdering John Jago, now missing from the farm and from the
+neighborhood. Any person who can give information of the existence of
+said Jago may save the lives of two wrongly-accused men by making
+immediate communication. Jago is about five feet four inches high. He
+is spare and wiry; his complexion is extremely pale, his eyes are dark,
+and very bright and restless. The lower part of his face is concealed
+by a thick black beard and mustache. The whole appearance of the man is
+wild and flighty.
+
+
+I added the date and the address. That evening a servant was sent on
+horseback to Narrabee to procure the insertion of the advertisement in
+the next issue of the newspaper.
+
+When we parted that night, Naomi looked almost like her brighter and
+happier self. Now that the advertisement was on its way to the
+printing-office, she was more than sanguine: she was certain of the
+result.
+
+"You don't know how you have comforted me," she said, in her frank,
+warm-hearted way, when we parted for the night. "All the newspapers
+will copy it, and we shall hear of John Jago before the week is out."
+She turned to go, and came back again to me. "I will never forgive
+Silas for writing that confession!" she whispered in my ear. "If he
+ever lives under the same roof with Ambrose again, I--well, I believe I
+wouldn't marry Ambrose if he did! There!"
+
+She left me. Through the wakeful hours of the night my mind dwelt on
+her last words. That she should contemplate, under any circumstances,
+even the bare possibility of not marrying Ambrose, was, I am ashamed to
+say, a direct encouragement to certain hopes which I had already begun
+to form in secret. The next day's mail brought me a letter on business.
+My clerk wrote to inquire if there was any chance of my returning to
+England in time to appear in court at the opening of next law term. I
+answered, without hesitation, "It is still impossible for me to fix the
+date of my return." Naomi was in the room while I was writing. How
+would she have answered, I wonder, if I had told her the truth, and
+said, "You are responsible for this letter?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. 
+
+THE SHERIFF AND THE GOVERNOR.
+
+THE question of time was now a serious question at Morwick Farm. In six
+weeks the court for the trial of criminal cases was to be opened at
+Narrabee.
+
+During this interval no new event of any importance occurred.
+
+Many idle letters reached us relating to the advertisement for John
+Jago; but no positive information was received. Not the slightest trace
+of the lost man turned up; not the shadow of a doubt was cast on the
+assertion of the prosecution, that his body had been destroyed in the
+kiln. Silas Meadowcroft held firmly to the horrible confession that he
+had made. His brother Ambrose, with equal resolution, asserted his
+innocence, and reiterated the statement which he had already advanced.
+At regular periods I accompanied Naomi to visit him in the prison. As
+the day appointed for the opening of the court approached, he seemed to
+falter a little in his resolution; his manner became restless; and he
+grew irritably suspicious about the merest trifles. This change did not
+necessarily imply the consciousness of guilt: it might merely have
+indicated natural nervous agitation as the time for the trial drew
+near. Naomi noticed the alteration in her lover. It greatly increased
+her anxiety, though it never shook her confidence in Ambrose. Except at
+meal-times, I was left, during the period of which I am now writing,
+almost constantly alone with the charming American girl. Miss
+Meadowcroft searched the newspapers for tidings of the living John Jago
+in the privacy of her own room. Mr. Meadowcroft would see nobody but
+his daughter and his doctor, and occasionally one or two old friends. I
+have since had reason to believe that Naomi, in these days of our
+intimate association, discovered the true nature of the feeling with
+which she had inspired me. But she kept her secret. Her manner toward
+me steadily remained the manner of a sister; she never overstepped by a
+hair-breadth the safe limits of the character that she had assumed.
+
+The sittings of the court began. After hearing the evidence, and
+examining the confession of Silas Meadowcroft, the grand jury found a
+true bill against both the prisoners. The day appointed for their trial
+was the first day in the new week.
+
+I had carefully prepared Naomi's mind for the decision of the grand
+jury. She bore the new blow bravely.
+
+"If you are not tired of it," she said, "come with me to the prison
+tomorrow. Ambrose will need a little comfort by that time." She paused,
+and looked at the day's letters lying on the table. "Still not a word
+about John Jago," she said. "And all the papers have copied the
+advertisement. I felt so sure we should hear of him long before this!"
+
+"Do you still feel sure that he is living?" I ventured to ask.
+
+"I am as certain of it as ever," she replied, firmly. "He is somewhere
+in hiding; perhaps he is in disguise. Suppose we know no more of him
+than we know now when the trial begins? Suppose the jury--" She
+stopped, shuddering. Death--shameful death on the scaffold--might be
+the terrible result of the consultation of the jury. "We have waited
+for news to come to us long enough," Naomi resumed. "We must find the
+tracks of John Jago for ourselves. There is a week yet before the trial
+begins. Who will help me to make inquiries? Will you be the man, friend
+Lefrank?"
+
+It is needless to add (though I knew nothing would come of it) that I
+consented to be the man.
+
+We arranged to apply that day for the order of admission to the prison,
+and, having seen Ambrose, to devote ourselves immediately to the
+contemplated search. How that search was to be conducted was more than
+I could tell, and more than Naomi could tell. We were to begin by
+applying to the police to help us to find John Jago, and we were then
+to be guided by circumstances. Was there ever a more hopeless programme
+than this?
+
+"Circumstances" declared themselves against us at starting. I applied,
+as usual, for the order of admission to the prison, and the order was
+for the first time refused; no reason being assigned by the persons in
+authority for taking this course. Inquire as I might, the only answer
+given was, "not to-day."
+
+At Naomi's suggestion, we went to the prison to seek the explanation
+which was refused to us at the office. The jailer on duty at the outer
+gate was one of Naomi's many admirers. He solved the mystery cautiously
+in a whisper. The sheriff and the governor of the prison were then
+speaking privately with Ambrose Meadowcroft in his cell; they had
+expressly directed that no persons should be admitted to see the
+prisoner that day but themselves.
+
+What did it mean? We returned, wondering, to the farm. There Naomi,
+speaking by chance to one of the female servants, made certain
+discoveries.
+
+Early that morning the sheriff had been brought to Morwick by an old
+friend of the Meadowcrofts. A long interview had been held between Mr.
+Meadowcroft and his daughter and the official personage introduced by
+the friend. Leaving the farm, the sheriff had gone straight to the
+prison, and had proceeded with the governor to visit Ambrose in his
+cell. Was some potent influence being brought privately to bear on
+Ambrose? Appearances certainly suggested that inquiry. Supposing the
+influence to have been really exerted, the next question followed, What
+was the object in view? We could only wait and see.
+
+Our patience was not severely tried. The event of the next day
+enlightened us in a very unexpected manner. Before noon, the neighbors
+brought startling news from the prison to the farm.
+
+Ambrose Meadowcroft had confessed himself to be the murderer of John
+Jago! He had signed the confession in the presence of the sheriff and
+the governor on that very day.
+
+I saw the document. It is needless to reproduce it here. In substance,
+Ambrose confessed what Silas had confessed; claiming, however, to have
+only struck Jago under intolerable provocation, so as to reduce the
+nature of his offense against the law from murder to manslaughter. Was
+the confession really the true statement of what had taken place? or
+had the sheriff and the governor, acting in the interests of the family
+name, persuaded Ambrose to try this desperate means of escaping the
+ignominy of death on the scaffold? The sheriff and the governor
+preserved impenetrable silence until the pressure put on them
+judicially at the trial obliged them to speak.
+
+Who was to tell Naomi of this last and saddest of all the calamities
+which had fallen on her? Knowing how I loved her in secret, I felt an
+invincible reluctance to be the person who revealed Ambrose
+Meadowcroft's degradation to his betrothed wife. Had any other member
+of the family told her what had happened? The lawyer was able to answer
+me; Miss Meadowcroft had told her.
+
+I was shocked when I heard it. Miss Meadowcroft was the last person in
+the house to spare the poor girl; Miss Meadowcroft would make the hard
+tidings doubly terrible to bear in the telling. I tried to find Naomi,
+without success. She had been always accessible at other times. Was she
+hiding herself from me now? The idea occurred to me as I was descending
+the stairs after vainly knocking at the door of her room. I was
+determined to see her. I waited a few minutes, and then ascended the
+stairs again suddenly. On the landing I met her, just leaving her room.
+
+She tried to run back. I caught her by the arm, and detained her. With
+her free hand she held her handkerchief over her face so as to hide it
+from me.
+
+"You once told me I had comforted you," I said to her, gently. "Won't
+you let me comfort you now?"
+
+She still struggled to get away, and still kept her head turned from
+me.
+
+"Don't you see that I am ashamed to look you in the face?" she said, in
+low, broken tones. "Let me go."
+
+I still persisted in trying to soothe her. I drew her to the
+window-seat. I said I would wait until she was able to speak to me.
+
+She dropped on the seat, and wrung her hands on her lap. Her downcast
+eyes still obstinately avoided meeting mine.
+
+"Oh!" she said to herself, "what madness possessed me? Is it possible
+that I ever disgraced myself by loving Ambrose Meadowcroft?" She
+shuddered as the idea found its way to expression on her lips. The
+tears rolled slowly over her cheeks. "Don't despise me, Mr. Lefrank!"
+she said, faintly.
+
+I tried, honestly tried, to put the confession before her in its least
+unfavorable light.
+
+"His resolution has given way," I said. "He has done this, despairing
+of proving his innocence, in terror of the scaffold."
+
+She rose, with an angry stamp of her foot. She turned her face on me
+with the deep-red flush of shame in it, and the big tears glistening in
+her eyes.
+
+"No more of him!" she said, sternly. "If he is not a murderer, what
+else is he? A liar and a coward! In which of his characters does he
+disgrace me most? I have done with him forever! I will never speak to
+him again!" She pushed me furiously away from her; advanced a few steps
+toward her own door; stopped, and came back to me. The generous nature
+of the girl spoke in her next words. "I am not ungrateful to _you_,
+friend Lefrank. A woman in my place is only a woman; and, when she is
+shamed as I am, she feels it very bitterly. Give me your hand! God
+bless you!"
+
+She put my hand to her lips before I was aware of her, and kissed it,
+and ran back into her room.
+
+I sat down on the place which she had occupied. She had looked at me
+for one moment when she kissed my hand. I forgot Ambrose and his
+confession; I forgot the coming trial; I forgot my professional duties
+and my English friends. There I sat, in a fool's elysium of my own
+making, with absolutely nothing in my mind but the picture of Naomi's
+face at the moment when she had last looked at me!
+
+I have already mentioned that I was in love with her. I merely add this
+to satisfy you that I tell the truth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. 
+
+THE PEBBLE AND THE WINDOW.
+
+MISS MEADOWCROFT and I were the only representatives of the family at
+the farm who attended the trial. We went separately to Narrabee.
+Excepting the ordinary greetings at morning and night, Miss Meadowcroft
+had not said one word to me since the time when I had told her that I
+did _not_ believe John Jago to be a living man.
+
+I have purposely abstained from encumbering my narrative with legal
+details. I now propose to state the nature of the defense in the
+briefest outline only.
+
+We insisted on making both the prisoners plead not guilty. This done,
+we took an objection to the legality of the proceedings at starting. We
+appealed to the old English law, that there should be no conviction for
+murder until the body of the murdered person was found, or proof of its
+destruction obtained beyond a doubt. We denied that sufficient proof
+had been obtained in the case now before the court.
+
+The judges consulted, and decided that the trial should go on.
+
+We took our next objection when the confessions were produced in
+evidence. We declared that they had been extorted by terror, or by
+undue influence; and we pointed out certain minor particulars in which
+the two confessions failed to corroborate each other. For the rest, our
+defense on this occasion was, as to essentials, what our defense had
+been at the inquiry before the magistrate. Once more the judges
+consulted, and once more they overruled our objection. The confessions
+were admitted in evidence. On their side, the prosecution produced one
+new witness in support of their case. It is needless to waste time in
+recapitulating his evidence. He contradicted himself gravely on
+cross-examination. We showed plainly, and after investigation proved,
+that he was not to be believed on his oath.
+
+The chief-justice summed up.
+
+He charged, in relation to the confessions, that no weight should be
+attached to a confession incited by hope or fear; and he left it to the
+jury to determine whether the confessions in this case had been so
+influenced. In the course of the trial, it had been shown for the
+defense that the sheriff and the governor of the prison had told
+Ambrose, with his father's knowledge and sanction, that the case was
+clearly against him; that the only chance of sparing his family the
+disgrace of his death by public execution lay in making a confession;
+and that they would do their best, if he did confess, to have his
+sentence commuted to imprisonment for life. As for Silas, he was proved
+to have been beside himself with terror when he made his abominable
+charge against his brother. We had vainly trusted to the evidence on
+these two points to induce the court to reject the confessions: and we
+were destined to be once more disappointed in anticipating that the
+same evidence would influence the verdict of the jury on the side of
+mercy. After an absence of an hour, they returned into court with a
+verdict of "Guilty" against both the prisoners.
+
+Being asked in due form if they had anything to say in mitigation of
+their sentence, Ambrose and Silas solemnly declared their innocence,
+and publicly acknowledged that their respective confessions had been
+wrung from them by the hope of escaping the hangman's hands. This
+statement was not noticed by the bench. The prisoners were both
+sentenced to death.
+
+On my return to the farm, I did not see Naomi. Miss Meadowcroft
+informed her of the result of the trial. Half an hour later, one of the
+women-servants handed to me an envelope bearing my name on it in
+Naomi's handwriting.
+
+The envelope inclosed a letter, and with it a slip of paper on which
+Naomi had hurriedly written these words: "For God's sake, read the
+letter I send to you, and do something about it immediately!"
+
+I looked at the letter. It assumed to be written by a gentleman in New
+York. Only the day before, he had, by the merest accident, seen the
+advertisement for John Jago cut out of a newspaper and pasted into a
+book of "curiosities" kept by a friend. Upon this he wrote to Morwick
+Farm to say that he had seen a man exactly answering to the description
+of John Jago, but bearing another name, working as a clerk in a
+merchant's office in Jersey City. Having time to spare before the mail
+went out, he had returned to the office to take another look at the man
+before he posted his letter. To his surprise, he was informed that the
+clerk had not appeared at his desk that day. His employer had sent to
+his lodgings, and had been informed that he had suddenly packed up his
+hand-bag after reading the newspaper at breakfast; had paid his rent
+honestly, and had gone away, nobody knew where!
+
+It was late in the evening when I read these lines. I had time for
+reflection before it would be necessary for me to act.
+
+Assuming the letter to be genuine, and adopting Naomi's explanation of
+the motive which had led John Jago to absent himself secretly from the
+farm, I reached the conclusion that the search for him might be
+usefully limited to Narrabee and to the surrounding neighborhood.
+
+The newspaper at his breakfast had no doubt given him his first
+information of the "finding" of the grand jury, and of the trial to
+follow. It was in my experience of human nature that he should venture
+back to Narrabee under these circumstances, and under the influence of
+his infatuation for Naomi. More than this, it was again in my
+experience, I am sorry to say, that he should attempt to make the
+critical position of Ambrose a means of extorting Naomi's consent to
+listen favorably to his suit. Cruel indifference to the injury and the
+suffering which his sudden absence might inflict on others was plainly
+implied in his secret withdrawal from the farm. The same cruel
+indifference, pushed to a further extreme, might well lead him to press
+his proposals privately on Naomi, and to fix her acceptance of them as
+the price to be paid for saving her cousin's life.
+
+To these conclusions I arrived after much thinking. I had determined,
+on Naomi's account, to clear the matter up; but it is only candid to
+add that my doubts of John Jago's existence remained unshaken by the
+letter. I believed it to be nothing more nor less than a heartless and
+stupid "hoax."
+
+
+The striking of the hall-clock roused me from my meditations. I counted
+the strokes--midnight!
+
+I rose to go up to my room. Everybody else in the farm had retired to
+bed, as usual, more than an hour since. The stillness in the house was
+breathless. I walked softly, by instinct, as I crossed the room to look
+out at the night. A lovely moonlight met my view; it was like the
+moonlight on the fatal evening when Naomi had met John Jago on the
+garden walk.
+
+My bedroom candle was on the side-table; I had just lighted it. I was
+just leaving the room, when the door suddenly opened, and Naomi herself
+stood before me!
+
+Recovering the first shook of her sudden appearance, I saw instantly in
+her eager eyes, in her deadly-pale cheeks, that something serious had
+happened. A large cloak was thrown over her; a white handkerchief was
+tied over her head. Her hair was in disorder; she had evidently just
+risen in fear and in haste from her bed.
+
+"What is it?" I asked, advancing to meet her.
+
+She clung, trembling with agitation, to my arm.
+
+"John Jago!" she whispered.
+
+You will think my obstinacy invincible. I could hardly believe it, even
+then!
+
+"Where?" I asked.
+
+"In the back-yard," she replied, "under my bedroom window!"
+
+The emergency was far too serious to allow of any consideration for the
+small proprieties of every-day life.
+
+"Let me see him!" I said.
+
+"I am here to fetch you," she answered, in her frank and fearless way.
+"Come upstairs with me."
+
+Her room was on the first floor of the house, and was the only bedroom
+which looked out on the back-yard. On our way up the stairs she told me
+what had happened.
+
+"I was in bed," she said, "but not asleep, when I heard a pebble strike
+against the window-pane. I waited, wondering what it meant. Another
+pebble was thrown against the glass. So far, I was surprised, but not
+frightened. I got up, and ran to the window to look out. There was John
+Jago looking up at me in the moonlight!"
+
+"Did he see you?"
+
+"Yes. He said, 'Come down and speak to me! I have something serious to
+say to you!'"
+
+"Did you answer him?"
+
+"As soon as I could catch my breath, I said, 'Wait a little,' and ran
+downstairs to you. What shall I do?"
+
+"Let _me_ see him, and I will tell you."
+
+We entered her room. Keeping cautiously behind the window-curtain, I
+looked out.
+
+There he was! His beard and mustache were shaved off; his hair was
+close cut. But there was no disguising his wild, brown eyes, or the
+peculiar movement of his spare, wiry figure, as he walked slowly to and
+fro in the moonlight waiting for Naomi. For the moment, my own
+agitation almost overpowered me; I had so firmly disbelieved that John
+Jago was a living man!
+
+"What shall I do?" Naomi repeated.
+
+"Is the door of the dairy open?" I asked.
+
+"No; but the door of the tool-house, round the corner, is not locked."
+
+"Very good. Show yourself at the window, and say to him, 'I am coming
+directly.'"
+
+The brave girl obeyed me without a moment's hesitation.
+
+There had been no doubt about his eyes and his gait; there was no doubt
+now about his voice, as he answered softly from below--"All right!"
+
+"Keep him talking to you where he is now," I said to Naomi, "until I
+have time to get round by the other way to the tool-house. Then pretend
+to be fearful of discovery at the dairy, and bring him round the
+corner, so that I can hear him behind the door."
+
+We left the house together, and separated silently. Naomi followed my
+instructions with a woman's quick intelligence where stratagems are
+concerned. I had hardly been a minute in the tool-house before I heard
+him speaking to Naomi on the other side of the door.
+
+The first words which I caught distinctly related to his motive for
+secretly leaving the farm. Mortified pride--doubly mortified by Naomi's
+contemptuous refusal and by the personal indignity offered to him by
+Ambrose--was at the bottom of his conduct in absenting himself from
+Morwick. He owned that he had seen the advertisement, and that it had
+actually encouraged him to keep in hiding!
+
+"After being laughed at and insulted and denied, I was glad," said the
+miserable wretch, "to see that some of you had serious reason to wish
+me back again. It rests with you, Miss Naomi, to keep me here, and to
+persuade me to save Ambrose by showing myself and owning to my name."
+
+"What do you mean?" I heard Naomi ask, sternly.
+
+He lowered his voice; but I could still hear him.
+
+"Promise you will marry me," he said, "and I will go before the
+magistrate to-morrow, and show him that I am a living man."
+
+"Suppose I refuse?"
+
+"In that case you will lose me again, and none of you will find me till
+Ambrose is hanged."
+
+"Are you villain enough, John Jago, to mean what you say?" asked the
+girl, raising her voice.
+
+"If you attempt to give the alarm," he answered, "as true as God's
+above us, you will feel my hand on your throat! It's my turn now, miss;
+and I am not to be trifled with. Will you have me for your husband--yes
+or no?"
+
+"No!" she answered, loudly and firmly.
+
+I burst open the door, and seized him as he lifted his hand on her. He
+had not suffered from the nervous derangement which had weakened me,
+and he was the stronger man of the two. Naomi saved my life. She struck
+up his pistol as he pulled it out of his pocket with his free hand and
+presented it at my head. The bullet was fired into the air. I tripped
+up his heels at the same moment. The report of the pistol had alarmed
+the house. We two together kept him on the ground until help arrived.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. 
+
+THE END OF IT.
+
+JOHN JAGO was brought before the magistrate, and John Jago was
+identified the next day.
+
+The lives of Ambrose and Silas were, of course, no longer in peril, so
+far as human justice was concerned. But there were legal delays to be
+encountered, and legal formalities to be observed, before the brothers
+could be released from prison in the characters of innocent men.
+
+During the interval which thus elapsed, certain events happened which
+may be briefly mentioned here before I close my narrative.
+
+Mr. Meadowcroft the elder, broken by the suffering which he had gone
+through, died suddenly of a rheumatic affection of the heart. A codicil
+attached to his will abundantly justified what Naomi had told me of
+Miss Meadowcroft's influence over her father, and of the end she had in
+view in exercising it. A life income only was left to Mr. Meadowcroft's
+sons. The freehold of the farm was bequeathed to his daughter, with the
+testator's recommendation added, that she should marry his "best and
+dearest friend, Mr. John Jago."
+
+Armed with the power of the will, the heiress of Morwick sent an
+insolent message to Naomi, requesting her no longer to consider herself
+one of the inmates at the farm. Miss Meadowcroft, it should be here
+added, positively refused to believe that John Jago had ever asked
+Naomi to be his wife, or had ever threatened her, as I had heard him
+threaten her, if she refused. She accused me, as she accused Naomi, of
+trying meanly to injure John Jago in her estimation, out of hatred
+toward "that much-injured man;" and she sent to me, as she had sent to
+Naomi, a formal notice to leave the house.
+
+We two banished ones met the same day in the hall, with our
+traveling-bags in our hands.
+
+"We are turned out together, friend Lefrank," said Naomi, with her
+quaintly-comical smile. "You will go back to England, I guess; and I
+must make my own living in my own country. Women can get employment in
+the States if they have a friend to speak for them. Where shall I find
+somebody who can give me a place?"
+
+I saw my way to saying the right word at the right moment.
+
+"I have got a place to offer you," I replied.
+
+She suspected nothing, so far.
+
+"That's lucky, sir," was all she said. "Is it in a telegraph-office or
+in a dry-goods store?"
+
+I astonished my little American friend by taking her then and there in
+my arms, and giving her my first kiss.
+
+"The office is by my fireside," I said; "the salary is anything in
+reason you like to ask me for; and the place, Naomi, if you have no
+objection to it, is the place of my wife."
+
+I have no more to say, except that years have passed since I spoke
+those words and that I am as fond of Naomi as ever.
+
+Some months after our marriage, Mrs. Lefrank wrote to a friend at
+Narrabee for news of what was going on at the farm. The answer informed
+us that Ambrose and Silas had emigrated to New Zealand, and that Miss
+Meadowcroft was alone at Morwick Farm. John Jago had refused to marry
+her. John Jago had disappeared again, nobody knew where.
+
+NOTE IN CONCLUSION.--The first idea of this little story was suggested
+to the author by a printed account of a trial which actually took
+place, early in the present century, in the United States. The
+published narrative of this strange case is entitled "The Trial,
+Confessions, and Conviction of Jesse and Stephen Boorn for the Murder
+of Russell Colvin, and the Return of the Man supposed to have been
+murdered. By Hon. Leonard Sargeant, Ex-Lieutenant Governor of Vermont.
+(Manchester, Vermont, _Journal_ Book and Job Office, 1873.)" It may not
+be amiss to add, for the benefit of incredulous readers, that all the
+"improbable events" in the story are matters of fact, taken from the
+printed narrative. Anything which "looks like truth" is, in nine cases
+out of ten, the invention of the author.--W. C.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dead Alive, by Wilkie Collins
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