Arrived at the factory, I bade the boys place the bodies side by side on a spare bed in an empty room, and then I sent them to dig a grave in the little burial-ground on the Point, where two or three worm-eaten wooden crosses marked the resting-places of former agents of Messrs. Flint Brothers.

As quick interment was necessary in such a climate, even on that very day, I went to call Jackson in order that he might perform the duty that was his—­that of reading the burial service over the dead, and of sealing up the desk and effects of Mr. Bransome.  But Jackson was not in the factory.  I guessed, however, where he was; and sure enough I found him in his accustomed haunt at the end of the Point.  The moment he saw me he tried to hide himself among the brushwood, but I was too quick for him, and spied him as he crouched behind a dwarf palm.

“I know, I know,” he cried, as I ran up to him; “I saw you come along the beach.  Bury them, bury them out of sight.”

“Come, Mr. Jackson,” I replied, “it isn’t fair to put all the trouble on to me.  I am sure I have had enough of the weariness and anxiety of this sad business.  You must take your share of it.  I want you to read the service for the dead over them.”

“No, no,” he almost shrieked; “bury them quick; never mind me.  Put them out of sight.”

“I will not,” I said, resolutely.  “For your own sake you must, at any rate, view the bodies.”

“They have not been murdered?” He replied.  But the startled look with which I received the suggestion his words implied seemed to make him recollect himself, for he rose and took my arm without saying more.  As he did so, I felt for the first time a sort of repugnance toward him.  Up to that moment my feeling had been one of pity and anxiety on his account, but now I loathed him.  This he seemed instinctively to feel, and he clung closely to me.

Once at the factory I determined that there should be no more delay on his part, and I took him to the door of the room where the bodies had been laid, but at it he made a sudden halt and would not enter.  Covering his face with his hands, he trembled violently as I pushed the door open and advanced to the bedside.  The room, hushed and in semi-darkness; the white sheet, whose surface showed too plainly the forms beneath it; and the scared, terrified face of the man who, with brain afire, stood watching, with staring eyes, the bed, made a scene I have never forgotten.

Slowly I turned down the upper part of the sheet, and Jackson, as if fascinated by the act, advanced a step or two into the room, but with face averted.  Gradually he turned it toward the bodies, and for a moment his gaze rested upon them.  The next instant he staggered forward, looked at the woman’s face, panted for breath once or twice, and then, with uplifted hands and a wild cry of “Lucy!” fell his length upon the floor.  When I stooped over him he was in convulsions, and dark matter was oozing out of his mouth.  The climax had come.  I shouted for the servants, and they carried him to his own room, and placed him on his own bed.