“’Twelve,” Hannah answered, and her father went wandering on like one out of his mind, talking of Burton when he was a boy—­of his dead wife—­of Hannah, who had suffered so long, and of the storm, which he said was like the one which swept the New England hills thirty-one years ago that very night, when the snow fell so deep that no one came near the place till Monday.

“Three whole days,” he said.  “Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and I had time to hide the dark deed so securely that it has never been suspected.”

Burton started quickly, and glanced at his sister with a look of amazed inquiry.  He had thought of forgery, and theft, and embezzlement, but never of what his father’s words might imply, and the cold sweat began to froze from the palms of his hands while a kind of nightmare crept over him, and kept him rooted to the spot as his father went on: 

“But, oh! what agony of remorse I have endured!  The tortures of the lost are not more intense than my sufferings have been!  Think of my meeting people day after day with the mark of Cain upon my brow, burning there so hotly that it seemed as if you must all see it, and know my guilt.  How could I join myself to God’s people with this sin unconfessed?  I could not, and yet, I feel in my heart that I am forgiven, washed in His blood as white as snow, so that there is rest for me in Paradise.  Still, I must confess; I must tell you, my son, and you, my minister; but no one else—­not Grey—­no, no, not the boy Grey, who loves me so much.  His life must not be shadowed with disgrace.  He must not hate me in my coffin.  Oh, Grey!  Grey!  May God bless the boy and give him every needful happiness, and make him so good and noble that his life will blot out the stain upon our name.

“Father!” Burton cried, in a choking voice; “for pity’s sake, have done, and tell me what you mean!  The suspense is terrible.”

“I mean,” and the old man spoke clearly and distinctly—­“I mean that, thirty-one years ago to-night, in the heat of passion, I killed a man in the kitchen yonder, and buried him under this floor, under my bed, and I have slept over his grave ever since!”

“A murderer!” dropped from Burton Jerrold’s pale lips; and “A murderer!” was echoed in the next room by lips far whiter than Burton Jerrold’s, and which quivered with mortal pain as the boy Grey started from his stooping position over the stove and felt that he was dying.

For Grey was there, and had been for the last few minutes, and had heard the secret which he was not to know.

After his father left Grey’s Park, he had sat a few minutes with his mother and aunt, and then, complaining of a headache, had asked to be excused, and gone to his room, which was at the head of some stairs leading down into a narrow hall and out into the side yard.  When the boy entered his chamber, he had no intention of going to the farm-house, but as he thought of his grandfather dying, and that to-morrow might perhaps be too late to see him alive, the wish to go there grew stronger and stronger, until it became an impulse which he could not resist.