For a moment Peter Jerrold regarded her with the face of a maniac; then his expression changed, and with a burst of tears and sobs he fell upon his knees at her feet, and clasping the hem of her dress abjectly in his hands, besought her to pity him, to have mercy, and save him from the gallows, for in the first frenzy of fear he felt it would be his life they would require if once his guilt were known.

“I cannot die a felon’s death.  You do not want your poor father hung!  Think of yourself; think of Burton; both so young, to carry such a disgrace all your lives.  I did not mean to kill him; God knows I didn’t.  He provoked me so, he hit me first, and I struck harder than I thought, and he is dead.  Oh, what shall I do?  What shall I do?  I cannot be hung; you will not betray me.  Promise me you will not!”

She had no thought of betraying him, except as she had threatened it in defense of Rover, who now stood up erect, looking first at her, and then at her father, as if curious to see how it would end.

“Father, I have no wish to see you hung,” Hannah said, while her knees shook under her at the thought.  “I shall not witness against you, if I can help it.  But what will you do?  How can you keep it a secret?  People will know, when they see him, that he did not die by fair means.”

To her the thought of hiding the crime had not occurred, and a shudder of horror ran through her frame when her father said: 

“People need not know.  He was going to Europe.  Let them think he has gone, and we will bury him, you and I, where he will never be found.”

“Bury him here?  Where? and Hannah’s teeth chattered with fright, as she thought of living all her life in a house which held a buried secret in the shape of a murdered man.

“Bury him under the floor of my room, over in the corner where the bed always stands,” the father replied so calmly that Hannah looked at him wonderingly to see if he were utterly void of feeling, that he could speak so quietly of what filled her with unspeakable dread.

But he was neither callous nor unconcerned.  He was merely stunned with the magnitude and suddenness of his crime, and the natural fear of its detection.  The repentance, the remorse were to come afterward, and be meted out to him in such measure of bitterness as has seldom fallen to the lot of man.  Regarding his daughter fixedly for a moment, he said in a hard, reckless kind of way: 

“Hannah, there is no use in whimpering now.  The deed is done, and cannot be undone; though, God is my witness, I would give my life in a moment for the one I have taken, if I could, and I swear to you solemnly that I wish I had been the one killed rather than the one to kill.  But it was not to be so.  I have slain my friend.  The world would call it murder, as you did, and hang me.  I cannot be hung.  I must hide it, bury it, and you must help and swear on the Bible not to tell so long as I live.  Will you do it?  Answer, quick, and let us get to work, for I am a very coward, and hear voices in the storm as of people coming to take me.  Will you help me, and will you swear?”