desiring, she said, to have as many witnesses as possible to what she
was about to make known. 'You all know,' she said, 'that to-morrow was
to have been my wedding day. I wish you now to bear witness that I
refuse to-day or at any future time to marry Paul Merrick, and that no
argument or persuasion will induce me to do so. And I wish,' raising her
hand, to keep silence--'I wish to say publicly that it is no fault or
ill doing of Colonel Merrick's that has driven me to this resolve. I
say this as in the sight of Almighty God.' Nobody argued, or scarcely,
indeed, spoke to her. Every one saw that she was physically a very ill
woman; and it was commonly believed that she had received some sudden
shock which had unhinged her mind. An hour afterward the searching party
came in (for the young men, not finding Houston Simms, had gone out
again to search for him). They had found his dead body concealed in the
woods by Mill's spring. You know the place. There was a pistol shot
through the head, and a leathern pocketbook, which had apparently
contained money, was found empty a few feet away. That was the end of it
all, Mr. Floyd."

"You mean that Simms's murderer was never found?"

"Never," said Beardsley, "though detectives were brought down from
Richmond and set on the track. Their theory--a plausible one enough
too--was that Simms had been followed from New York by men who knew the
large sum he earned from the races, and that they had robbed and
murdered him, and readily escaped through the swamps."

"It never was my belief," said Dr. Scheffer, "that he was murdered at
all. It was hinted that he had stopped in a gambling house in New York,
and there lost whatever sum he had won at the races; and that rather
than meet his family in debt and penniless, he blew out his brains in
the first lonely place to which he came. That explanation was plain
enough."

"What was the end of the story so far as Miss Waring was concerned?" I
asked.

"Unfortunately, it never has had an end," said Mrs. Beardsley. "The
mystery remains. She was ill afterward; indeed, it was years before she
regained her bodily strength as before. But her mind had never been
unhinged, as Paul Merrick thought. He waited patiently, thinking that
some day her reason would return, and she would come back to him. But
Louisa Waring was perfectly sane even in the midst of her agony on that
night. From that day until now she has never by word or look given any
clue by