fore; but his words had a good effect, for Burton saw the truth there
was in them, and turning to his sister, who was sobbing piteously he
said:

"Forgive me, Hannah, if I seemed unjust. I am so stunned and hurt that I
am not myself, and do not know what I say. I am glad you kept silent; to
have spoken would have been to ruin me; but why, having kept the secret
so long, did you not keep it longer? Why did not father take it with
him to his grave? Surely no good can come from wounding and humiliating
me so cruelly."

"Perhaps not, my son," the old man answered, feebly. "For you it might
have been better if I had never spoken. Possibly it is a morbid fancy,
but I felt that I must confess to my minister. My conscience said so,
and that I must tell you in order that you may be a comfort and help to
Hannah in what she means to do."

"What does she mean to do?" Burton asked, in alarm, and his father
replied:

"Make restitution in some way to the friends of the man I killed, if she
can find them."

"Oh!" and Burton set his teeth firmly together as he thought what danger
there might be in restitution, for that would involve confession, and
that meant disgrace to the Jerrold name. "I shall prevent that if I can;
it is well, after all, that I should know," he thought; then to his
father he said; "Who was the man? Where are his friends? Tell me all
now."

"Yes, I will; but, Hannah, look--I thought I heard some one moving in
the next room, a few minutes ago," the old man said, and going to the
door, Hannah glanced around the empty kitchen which bore no trace of the
white-faced boy who not long before, had left it with an aching heart,
and who at that moment was kneeling in the snow and asking God to
forgive him for his grandfather's sin.

"There is no one there, and Sam is sleeping soundly in the room beyond,"
she said, as she returned to her father's side, and taking her place by
him passed her arm around him and supported and reassured him, while he
told the story of that awful night, a story which the author will tell
in her own words rather than in those of the dying man, who introduced a
great deal of matter irrelevant to the case.

CHAPTER XII.

THE STORY.

Forty years or more before the night of which we write, there had come
to Allington a peddler, whose home was across the sea, in Carnarvon,
Wales. He was a little, cross eyed, red-haired, wiry man, with a blunt,
sharp way of speaking, but was very pop