u ask. I am too vile, too great a sinner for
that. The very stones would cry out against me."

The clergyman thought him crazy, and after a time abandoned the effort,
and went but seldom to the farm-house, where Hannah had again entered
the dark cloud in which his coming had made a rift, and which now seemed
darker than ever, because of the momentary brightness which had been
thrown upon it. She, too, had labored with her father as Mr. Sanford had
done, telling him of the peace which was sure to follow a duty
performed, but he answered her:

"Never, child, never; for, don't you see, I must first confess, and that
is to put the halter around my own neck. They would hang me now, sure,
for the concealment, if for nothing more. It might have been better if I
had told at first, as you advised. I believe now they would have been
lenient toward me. A few years in prison, perhaps, and then freedom the
rest of my life. Oh, if I had done it. But now it is forever too late.
God may forgive me. I think he will, but I can never join his church
with this crime on my soul."

After this Hannah said no more to him upon the subject, but bent all her
energies to soothe and rid him of the morbid, half-crazy fancies which
had taken possession of him.

And so the wretched years went on, until Peter Jerrold had numbered more
than three score years and ten, and suffered enough to atone many times
for crimes far more heinous than his had been. But nature at last could
endure no more, and on the Thanksgiving night, thirty-one years after
the event which had blighted his life, he felt that he was dying, and
insisted upon confessing his sin not only to his son, but also to his
clergyman, who has been his friend and spiritual adviser for so many
years.

"I shall die so much easier," he said to Hannah, who sent for them both,
and then with her arm around her father, held him against her bosom,
while he told in substance, and with frequent pauses for breath, the
story we have narrated.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE EFFECT OF THE STORY.

After the first great shock of surprise, when the word murderer dropped
from his lips, and he reproached his sister so harshly and unreasonably,
Burton Jerrold stood with folded arms, and a gloomy, unsympathetic face,
as immovable at first as if he had been a stone, and listened to the
tale as repeated by his father. But when the tragic part was reached,
and he saw the dead man on the floor, his sister crouchin