I simply did it and escaped all—­lightning-flash and falling limb, and the lasso of swirling winds—­to find myself at last lying my full length along the bridge amid a shock of elements such as nature seldom sports with.  Here I clung, for I was breathless, waiting with head buried in my arm for the rain to abate before I attempted a further escape from the place which held such horror for me!

But no abatement came, and feeling the bridge shaking under me almost to cracking, I began to crawl, inch by inch, along its gaping boards till I reached its middle.

There God stopped me.

For, with a clangour as of rending worlds, a bolt, hot from the zenith, sped down upon the bluff behind me, throwing me down again upon my face and engulfing sense and understanding for one wild moment.  Then I sprang upright and with a yell of terror sped across the rocking boards beneath me to the road, no longer battling with my desire to look back; no longer asking myself when and how that dead man would be found; no longer even asking my own duty in the case; for Spencer’s Folly was on fire and the crime I had just seen perpetrated there would soon be a crime stricken from the sight of men forever.

In the flare of its tremendous burning I found my way up through the forest road to my home and into my father’s presence.  He like everybody else was up that night, and already alarmed at my continued absence.

“Spencer’s Folly is on fire,” I cried, as he cast dismayed eyes at my pallid and dripping figure.  “If you go to the door, you can see it!”

But I told him nothing more.

Perhaps other boys of my age can understand my silence.

I not only did not tell my father, but I told nobody, even after the discovery of Spencer’s charred body in the closet so miraculously preserved.  With every day that passed, it became harder to part with this baleful secret.  I felt it corroding my thoughts and destroying my spirits, and yet I kept still.  Only my taste for modelling was gone.  I have never touched clay since.

Claymore Tavern did change owners.  When I heard that a man by the name of Scoville had bought it, I went over to see Scoville.  He was the man.  Then I began to ask myself what I ought to do with my knowledge, and the more I asked myself this question, and the more I brooded over the matter, the less did I feel like taking, not the public, but my father, into my confidence.

I had never doubted his love for me, but I had always stood in great awe of his reproof, and I did not know where I was to find courage to tell him all the details of this adventure.