stood now what
had been singular in his grandfather's manner and in his Aunt Hannah's,
too; for she had been privy to the deed, and had helped to keep it from
the world, and to Grey this was the bitterest thought of all, the one
which made him sick, and faint and dizzy, as he groped his way to the
door, which he opened and closed cautiously, and then fell heavily upon
his face in the snow, with all consciousness for the moment blotted out.

The chill, however, and the damp revived him almost immediately, and
struggling to his feet he started on his route back to Grey's Park along
the same road he had come, seeing nothing, bearing nothing but that one
word, that name his father had given to his grandfather, and which he,
too, had echoed. Over and over again the winds repeated it until the,
woods seemed full of it, and he said to himself:

"Will it always be so? Shall I never hear anything but that again so
long as I live, and I am so young, only fourteen, and I meant to be a
great and honorable man, and a good one, too. And I can still be that.
God knows I am not to blame. Would he hear me, I wonder, if I should ask
him now to take some of this pain away which fills my heart to
bursting!"

And there, on the pure white snow, in the shadow of the leafless woods,
the heart-broken boy knelt down, and with clasped hands, and the great
tears streaming over his upturned face, asked God to forgive him for his
grandfather's sin, and take the pain away, and help him to be a good
man, if he could never be great and distinguished. And God heard that
prayer made to him in the wintry night, from the depths of the boyish
heart, and a feeling of quiet came over Grey as he resumed his walk.

"I am not to blame," he said, "and people will not think so if they
know, which they never will, for father will not tell, nor Mr. Sanford
either; but I shall always know, and life will never be the same to me
again."

It certainly looked forlorn and dreary enough to him by the time he
reached Grey's Park, and letting himself quietly in, he crept
noiselessly up to his bed, from which he did not rise until late the
next morning, when his Aunt Lucy came herself to call him, and told him
his grandfather was dead.

CHAPTER XI.

AT THE OLD MAN'S BEDSIDE.

When the word "murderer!" dropped from Burton Jerrold's lips, his father
started as if a bullet had pierced his heart, and the hot blood surged
up into his face, as he said:

"Oh, my