stood in our very midst.

"Stop!" he cried, "this burial must not go on." And he advanced his
arm above Juliet's body as if he would intervene his very heart
between it and the place of darkness into which it was about to
descend. "She was the victim, he the murderer; they shall not lie
together if I have to fling myself between them in the grave which you
have dug."

"But--but," interposed the minister, calm and composed even in the
face of this portentous figure and the appalling words which it had
uttered, "by what right do you call this one a murderer and the other
a victim? Did you see him murder her? Was there a crime enacted before
your eyes?"

"The boards were sawn," was the startling answer. "They must have been
sawn or they would never have given way beneath so light a weight. And
then he urged her--I saw him--pleaded with her, drew her by force of
eye and hand to step upon the scaffold without, though there was no
need for it, and she recoiled. And when her light foot was on it and
her half-smiling, half-timid face looked back upon us, he leaped out
beside her, when instantly came the sound of a great crack, and I
heard his laugh and her cry go up together, and--and--everything has
been midnight in my soul ever since, till suddenly through the blank
and horror surrounding me I caught the words, 'They will lie together
in one tomb!' Then--then I awoke and my voice came back to me and my
memory, and hither I hastened to stop this unhallowed work; for to lay
the victim beside her murderer is a sacrilege which I for one would
come back even from the grave to prevent."

"But why," moaned the father feebly amid the cries and confusion which
had been aroused by so gruesome an interference on the brink of the
grave, "but why should Orrin wish my Juliet's death? They were to have
been married soon--"

But piteous as were his tones no one listened, for just then a lad who
had been hiding behind the throng stepped out before us, showing a
face so white and a manner so perturbed that we all saw that he had
something to say of importance in this matter.

"The boards _have_ been sawn," he said. "I wanted to know and I
climbed up to see." At which words the whole crowd moved and swayed,
and a dozen hands stooped to lift the body of Juliet and carry it away
from that accursed spot.

But the minister is a just man and cautious, and he lifted up his arms
in such protest that they paused.

"Who knows," he suggested,