son, my son, that you should be the first to call me by a name
which even Hannah has never spoken, and she has known it all the time.
She saw me do the deed; she helped me bury it. Poor Hannah!"

"You!" and Burton turned fiercely upon his sister, who stood like a
block of marble and almost as colorless. "You helped. Then you were an
accessory to the crime, and never spoke, never told! No wonder your hair
turned white before its time!"

"Brother! brother!" Hannah cried, as she threw up her hands in an
anguish of entreaty. "You do not know, you cannot guess, or you would
never reproach me thus."

"But I do know that you kept silence, and that I, who thought myself so
honorable and high, am branded with disgrace, am the son of a--"

"Stay!" and the dying man gathered all his remaining strength for the
reproof. "You shall not call me by that name again. You shall not speak
thus to your sister, the noblest woman and the most faithful daughter
God ever gave to the world. I bound her by a solemn oath not to speak,
even had she wished to, which she did not, for I was her father; your
father, too, and I know that in some respects you are not worthy to
touch the hem of her garment. Say, Mr. Sanford," and he turned to the
rector, who had stood looking on, stupefied with what he heard, "did
Hannah do wrong, not to bear witness against me?"

"Hannah never does wrong," the rector said, rousing himself, and going a
step nearer to her he took her cold, clammy hand between his own, and
held it there, while he continued: "Mr. Jerrold, you reproach your
sister for her silence, but consider what her speaking would have done
for you! If you feel it so keenly when only you and I know of it, what
would you have felt had the whole world been made cognizant of the fact?
I do not know the circumstances of your father's crime. Probably there
was great provocation, and that it was done in self-defense, and if so
the gallows would not have been his punishment, though a prison might,
and do you think that as the son of a felon you could have stood where
you do now in the world's estimation? No; instead of reproaches, which I
do not believe spring from a sense of justice, rather thank your sister
who has given all the brightness of her life to shield her father from
punishment and you from disgrace."

The rector spoke more severely than was his wont, for he felt a contempt
for the man whose real character he now understood better than he had
be