Elisha Boone sat quite still.  He had listened at first with a flush of anger, which deepened as the girl pleaded, until it died away and left his face very pale.  He pushed himself away from the clinging figure, as if the better to see her face.  Then his head drooped.  He sighed heavily, rose and without a word left the room.  Kate heard him ascending the stairs, then the sound of his room door softly closing.  Had the hateful fires of vengeance been quenched?  It was her father’s way, when resolutely opposed, to quit the scene and without confessing himself in the wrong, do as Kate urged.  The next morning he was gone before she reached the breakfast-table.  There was a note on her plate in his handwriting.  She read with a sinking heart: 

“MY DAUGHTER:  If what you said last night is true, you can not be the daughter to me that you have been.  I am going to Washington, and when I come back you will know that your brother was deliberately murdered, and that his murderer, even in the grave, is held guilty before all men of the crime.”

The servant confirmed the tidings.  Her father had arisen early and departed on the first train.  What could it mean?  Had he some evidence that she had not heard?  Had Jack left papers incriminating him?  Ah! why carry the hideous feud further?  Why blast the melancholy repose of the living, by fastening this stain upon the dead?  But they could not.  She knew it.  She could herself refute any proof brought forward.  She would tell all.  She would reveal their tender relationship, and surely then any one, knowing the young man’s nature, would scout the assertion of his willfully shooting Wesley.  But surely Olympia and Mrs. Sprague must be able to tell, and tell decisively, the circumstances in the tragedy.  She would go to them.  She owed this to the living; she owed it still more imperatively to the dead.  She had not seen Olympia since her return.  Mrs. Sprague had been too infirm to see her when she called.  But she would not heed rebuffs now.  In such a cause, on such a mission, she would have stood at the Sprague door a suppliant until even the obstinacy of her father would have relented.  On her way across the square she saw Merry coming from the post.  She turned out of her way, and hurrying to the near-sighted spinster held out her hand, saying, softly: 

“Ah, Miss Merry, I’m so glad to see you!  I have been meaning to call on you ever since I heard of your return, but, what with sorrow and illness, I have put it off, and now I want you to take me home with you.  Will you not?”

The pleading tone, the caressing clasp of the hand, the sadly changed face, the somber black weeds, made the voice and figure so much unlike the old Kate, that Merry stood for an instant confused and blushing as she stammered: 

“Bless me, Miss Kate, I—­I—­shouldn’t have known you.  Ah, I am very glad to see you; sisters will be very glad to see you, too.  Do, do come right along with me.  I’m afraid the parlor won’t be very sightly, but you won’t mind, will you?”