ay across the miles that separate him from the means of
vengeance he burns to reach! But at last he arrives, tells his story,
the police at other cities are at once telegraphed, and the city
marshal follows Wagner to Boston. At eight o'clock that evening comes
the steamer Mayflower to the Shoals, with all the officers on board.
They land and make investigations at Smutty-Nose, then come here to
Appledore and examine Maren, and, when everything is done, steam back
to Portsmouth, which they reach at three o'clock in the morning. After
all are gone and his awful day's work is finished at last, poor John
comes back to Maren, and kneeling by the side of her bed, he is
utterly overpowered with what he has passed through; he is shaken with
sobs as he cries, "Oh, Maren, Maren, it is too much, too much! I
cannot bear it!" And Maren throws her arms about his neck, crying,
"Oh, John, John, don't! I shall be crazy, I shall die, if you go on
like that." Poor innocent, unhappy people, who never wronged a
fellow-creature in their lives!

But Ivan--what is their anguish to his? They dare not leave him alone
lest he do himself an injury. He is perfectly mute and listless; he
cannot weep, he can neither eat nor sleep. He sits like one in a
horrid dream. "Oh, my poor, poor brother!" Maren cries in tones of
deepest grief, when I speak his name to her next day. She herself
cannot rest a moment till she hears that Louis is taken; at every
sound her crazed imagination fancies he is coming back for her; she is
fairly beside herself with terror and anxiety; but the night following
that of the catastrophe brings us news that he is arrested, and there
is stern rejoicing at the Shoals; but no vengeance on him can bring
back those unoffending lives, or restore that gentle home. The dead
are properly cared for; the blood is washed from Anethe's beautiful
bright hair; she is clothed in her wedding-dress, the blue dress in
which she was married, poor child, that happy Christmas time in
Norway, a little more than a year ago. They are carried across the sea
to Portsmouth, the burial service is read over them, and they are
hidden in the earth. After poor Ivan has seen the faces of his wife
and sister still and pale in their coffins, their ghastly wounds
concealed as much as possible, flowers upon them and the priest
praying over them, his trance of misery is broken, the grasp of
despair is loosened a little about his heart. Yet hardly does he
notice whe