“That will do.  I am satisfied that what father did was done in self-defense, and so the world would have said, and acquitted him, too, I am sure.  I almost wish you had told at the time.  We should have lived it down, though I might never have married Geraldine and never have had Grey.  No, sister, you did right, and having kept it so long, we must keep it still.  No use to unearth it now, though I would give half my life and every dollar I own—­yes, I’d give everything except my boy Grey, to know it had never been there,” and he pointed to the corner of the room, where the bed was still standing, and under which was the hidden grave.

“Bessie is willing we should tell, and if I thought we ought, I should be willing, too,” Hannah said, but her brother shook his head.

“It can do no good to any one, so let the poor man rest in peace.  You have found his heirs and restitution can be made; the money is safe in the bank.”

“And now I must go, for Geraldine is waiting for me,” Burton said, adding, as be stood a moment by the door:  “I feel twenty years younger than I did, and you, Hannah—­why, you look thirty years younger, and are really a handsome woman for your age.  By the way, shall you live here, or with Grey?”

“I don’t know yet where I shall live,” Hannah replied, and her cheeks were scarlet as she said good-by and watched him as he drove away.

CHAPTER XIX.

JOEL ROGERS’ MONUMENT.

It was a very merry party which met next day at the farm-house, and Mr. Jerrold was the merriest of them all, though he could not understand exactly why he was so light-hearted and glad.  The fact that Joel Rogers died by his father’s hand remained the same, but it did not now affect him as it once had done.  Bessie seemed to have taken all the shame and pain away.  He was very fond of her, always calling her daughter when he addressed her, and when, after dinner was over, she came and sat at his side, and laying her hand on his, said to him, “Father, there is something I very much wish to do, and I want your consent,” he answered, unhesitatingly:  “You shall have it, no matter what you ask.”

“Thanks,” Bessie said, with a triumphant look at Grey, who was standing near.  “I thought you would not oppose me, even if Grey did.  You see, I have so much money that it burns my fingers, and I think I must have lived in America long enough to have caught your fever for change, or else the smell of plaster and paint at Stoneleigh awakened in me a desire for more, for, what I wish to do is to tear down this old house and build another one, where we can spend our summers.  This house, though very nice and comfortable, is falling to pieces, and will tumble down in some high wind.  The plastering is off in two of the rooms up stairs, and a part of the roof has fallen in over the bedroom and wood-shed.  Aunt Hannah says the snow was suffered to lie there