“What does she mean to do?” Burton asked, in alarm, and his father replied: 

“Make restitution in some way to the friends of the man I killed, if she can find them.”

“Oh!” and Burton set his teeth firmly together as he thought what danger there might be in restitution, for that would involve confession, and that meant disgrace to the Jerrold name.  “I shall prevent that if I can; it is well, after all, that I should know,” he thought; then to his father he said; “Who was the man?  Where are his friends?  Tell me all now.”

“Yes, I will; but, Hannah, look—­I thought I heard some one moving in the next room, a few minutes ago,” the old man said, and going to the door, Hannah glanced around the empty kitchen which bore no trace of the white-faced boy who not long before, had left it with an aching heart, and who at that moment was kneeling in the snow and asking God to forgive him for his grandfather’s sin.

“There is no one there, and Sam is sleeping soundly in the room beyond,” she said, as she returned to her father’s side, and taking her place by him passed her arm around him and supported and reassured him, while he told the story of that awful night, a story which the author will tell in her own words rather than in those of the dying man, who introduced a great deal of matter irrelevant to the case.

CHAPTER XII.

THE STORY.

Forty years or more before the night of which we write, there had come to Allington a peddler, whose home was across the sea, in Carnarvon, Wales.  He was a little, cross eyed, red-haired, wiry man, with a blunt, sharp way of speaking, but was very popular with the citizens of Allington, to whom he sold such small articles as he could conveniently carry in a bundle upon his back; needles, pins, thread, pencils, matches, thimbles, cough lozengers, Brandreth’s pills, handkerchiefs, ribbons, combs, and sometimes Irish laces and Balbriggans formed a part of his heterogeneous stock, which was varied from time to time to suit the season, or the wants of his customers.

Very close at a bargain, and very saving of his money, he seldom stopped at the hotel, but passed the night at the houses of his acquaintances, who frequently made no charge for his meals or his lodgings.  Especially was this the case at the farm-house where the peddler, whose name was Joel Rogers, was always welcome, and where he usually staid when in Allington.  Between Peter Jerrold and the peddler there was a strong friendship, and the two often sat into the small hours of the night, while the latter told marvelous tales of his wild Welsh country, which he held above all other lands, and to which, the last time he was seen in Allington, he said he was about to return.

For three days he remained in the town, selling off the most of his stock, and then bidding his friends good-by, started late on the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day for the adjoining town, where a few debts were owing him, and where he hoped to dispose of the rest of his merchandise.