try prepared for the
celebration of the wedding, and their presence in so large an assemblage
was scarcely noticed.

They met their principal in the course of the day, and with him arranged
the details of the robbery.

One thing John Scott insisted upon--that there was to be no violence,
no bloodshed; that if the robbery could not be effected quietly and
peaceably, without bodily harm to any inmate, it was not to be done at
all, it was to be given up at once.

The men promised all that their principal asked, on condition that he
would act his part, and let them into the castle.

That night John Scott did his work, and attained the climax of his evil
life.

He tampered with the valet, treated him with drugged whiskey, and while
the wretched man was in a stupid sleep, stole from him the pass-key to
Sir Lemuel Levison's private apartment.

We know how that terrible night ended. John Scott could not control the
devils he had raised.

Only robbery had been intended; but murder was perpetrated.

John Scott, with the curse of Cain upon his soul, and without the spoil
for which he had incurred it, fled to London and afterwards to the
Continent, where he became a homeless wanderer for years, and where he
was subsequently joined by his female companion, Rose.

CHAPTER XLV.

AFTER THE REVELATION.

During the latter portion of the mother-superior's story--the portion
that related to the delegalized elder son of the Duke of Hereward--a
light had dawned upon the mind of Salome, but so slowly that no sudden
shock of joy had been felt, no wild exclamation of astonishment uttered:
yet that light had revealed to the amazed and overjoyed young wife,
beyond all possibility of further doubt, the blessed truth of the perfect
freedom of her worshiped husband from all participation in the awful
crimes of which over-whelming circumstantial evidence had convicted him
in her own mind, but of which it was now certain that his miserable
brother, his "double" in appearance, was alone guilty.

The dark story had been told in the darkness of the abbess' den, so that
not even the varying color that must otherwise have betrayed the deep
emotion of the hearer, could be seen by the speaker.

At the conclusion of the story, one irrepressible reproach escaped the
lips of the young wife.

"Oh, mother! mother! If you knew all this, why did you not tell me
before? For you must also have known, what is now so clear to me, that
not the