“The shriek which involuntarily went up from my lips must have rung far and wide, but only the groaning of the night-wind answered me.  Driven by my fears to do something to save him if he was not yet dead, I tried the door, but it was locked; so was the window.  Yet I might have battered my way in at that moment had I not heard two men coming down the road, one of whom was shouting to the other:  ’I did not like his face.  I shan’t sleep till I’ve seen him again.’

“Somewhat relieved, I drew back from the road, but did not quit the spot till those men, seeing through the window what had happened, worked their way in and lifted him up in their arms.  The look with which they let him fall back again was eloquent, and convinced me that it was death I saw.  I started again upon my shuddering flight from Boone, secure in the belief that while my future would surely hold remorse for me, it would nevermore burden me with a hindrance in the shape of an unloved husband.”

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SINS OF THE FATHERS

The suspense which had held us tense and speechless was for the moment relieved and Mr. Steele allowed himself the following explanation: 

“My hand trembled and the bullet penetrated an inch too high.”

Then he relapsed again into silence.

Mrs. Packard shuddered and went on: 

“It may seem incredible to you, it seems incredible now to myself, but I completed my journey, entered my uncle’s house, was made welcome there and started upon my new life without letting my eyes fall for one instant on the columns of a newspaper.  I did not dare to see what they contained.  That short but bitter episode of my sixteenth year was a nightmare of horror, to be buried with my old name and all that could interfere with the delights of the cultured existence which my uncle’s means and affection opened before me.  Two years and I hardly remembered; three years and it came to me only in dreams; four and even dreams failed to suggest it; the present, the glorious present was all.  I had met you, Henry, and we had loved and married.

“Did any doubts come to disturb my joy?  Very few.  I had never received a word from Minnesota.  I was as dead to every one there as they all were to me.  I believed myself free and that the only wrong I did was in not taking you into my confidence.  But this, the very nature of my secret forbade.  How could I tell you what would inevitably alienate your affections?  That act of my early girlhood by which I had gained an undeserved freedom had been too base; sooner than let you know this blot on my life, I was content to risk the possibility—­the inconceivable possibility—­of Mr. Brainard’s having survived the attack he had made upon his own life.  Can you understand such temerity?  I can not, now that I see its results before me.