The Monday night following the tragedy, Hannah was stricken down with a low, nervous fever, which lasted for weeks, and from which she arose the mere shadow of her former self.  All life and vivacity had left her, and instead of a girl of fifteen she seemed like a woman of twenty-five, so quiet and reserved she became, with no color in her cheeks, no elasticity in her step, no joy in her voice, no brightness anywhere except in her large dark eyes, which shone with unusual brilliancy, and had in them always a look which puzzled and fascinated her friends, who little dreamed of what those strangely bright, beautiful eyes saw constantly before them.

Whether sleeping or waking the picture was always there, of the dead man on the floor with the blood-stains on his face, and she felt the touch of the clammy hands which she had folded upon his breast.  She could not go to school again, for in her morbid state of mind to study was impossible, and so she staid at home, brooding over the past and shrinking from the future, with no companionship except that of Rover, who seemed so fully to understand and sympathize with her.  Oftentimes when her work for the day was done, and she sat down listlessly upon a little seat beneath the apple tree which grew in the yard, the dog would go to her, and putting his head in her lap, gaze into her face with such a human look of pity in his eyes that her tears would fall like rain, as she wound her arms around his neck and sobbed: 

“Oh, dear old Rover, you know, and you are sorry for me.  What should I do without you!  What shall I do when you are gone?” and the white lips would frame a prayer that Rover might be spared to her long, for without him life would be intolerable.

And yet Hannah had no foolish fancies, filled though the house was, with the image of the dead man.  She did not believe in ghosts, and had no fear that the occupant of the hidden grave beneath the floor would come back to trouble her; it was rather the horror of the crime, the sin, which so oppressed her, filling her with the wildest fancies, and making her see always the dreadful word murder written everywhere upon the walls, and the blood-stains on the floor, where no trace was visible to other eyes than hers.  Sometimes in the dark night, in her lonely bed beneath the roof, with the stars looking in upon her, she felt as if her brain were on fire and that she was going mad with the load of anguish and guilt, for she accused herself as equally guilty with her father, inasmuch as she had witnessed the deed and was helping him to conceal it.

“But God knows I cannot help it.  I am bound with bonds I cannot break,” she would cry, as she stretched her hands toward heaven in dumb supplication for pardon and peace, which came at last to the troubled spirit.

And though she never knew again the joy of youth which had left her forever, there came to her long intervals of rest and quiet and comparative peace, if not happiness; and when, three years after the tragedy which had blighted her young life, she, with others of her companions, ratified her baptismal vows and openly confessed Christ, He who sees and knows the secrets of all hearts, knew that among those who knelt to receive the rite of confirmation there was not one purer or more sincere than she who thought herself the vilest of the vile.