A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2

gather in the streets, round every man who had anything of the story to tell. How the country people who had been in town when the murdered man was brought home, hurried along the solitary

a mile of the spot that day. On the contrary, no reasonable doubt could exist that the real murderer was the Indian who had been found among the bushes. The men who knew him spoke of him as passionate, brutal, more than half-savage-there was perfect fitness between his appearance and c

s housekeeper, brought back with her the story which a passing acquaintance had carried so far. She came in

as alone, sitting rather drearily looking into the fire,

ere's an awful

smiled, for Margery loved ma

Morton i

! Hush, don

, miss. Thi

It is in

the roadside a piece beyond Dawson's mi

that he had been-" sh

went into all the details s

nd stood there listening. Both she and Lucia, who, like every one else except perhaps his wife, had heard of the

vages of Indians about. I never

She felt her own muscles stiffen with fear. W

ean about Indi

indignant. "There's no white man, let him be ever su

y had taken t

He has been working for Dawson lately. They say he comes

eing no more than the natural horror on those two white faces of mother and

d misery of their lives; and it was not strange that, overwhelmed with the stronger and more personal interest, they should forget to wonder or lament ove

omprehended. But it was some time before either spoke. Each was trying to gauge the new depth which seemed to have opened under their feet-the wife and daughter of a murderer! The old ignominy, the old degradation, had been all but intolerable. How then should they bear this? And their secret, mu

Costello ro

said, with a smothered sigh, whic

look

e was no need to say what "it" was-the idea which had

But we must know; and if

cannot. It wi

d, the wan smile of

us, hardest perhaps for you, darling, just now, but I

gether, able to speak to each other as much by caresses as by words, they were both stronger, and cou

to Mr. Straffo

st we must kn

w to do

Mr. Leigh is sure to hear the particul

t mean to

ut that, to ask about a subject w

o better, for I shall not suffer as you will, and I c

I have had to serve a long appre

ood," she said. "Trust me, mother, I will be as steady as

down and kissed h

mental pain is harder to bear than phys

as usual, to Mr. Leigh's, and bring back all I can learn. But he will

questions, and only think I am very dilatory and changeable. No o

r and plain from the confusion which still enveloped all else. She, the daughter of the murderer, could never again meet the wife of the murdered man as a friend. If the punishment of the father descended to the children, did not their guilt descend too? Already she seemed to f

sery of the past weeks. But she was only a girl still, and had not learned to rule her thoughts as well as her looks and words. So if they grew morbid, and her dreary imagination somet

nd she had begun to try to devise means for carrying out that avoidance of all most nearly connecte

r expression of their thoughts than these vague phrases-"if it is he our ha

it. How can we"-she shuddered as she spoke-"

han that, we must keep our

look at her-a widow-and know w

al, even where there has been daily association between them, are not condemned, but rather pitied. No mind, but one cruelly prejudiced, would brand them with his guilt. Do not punish yourself, then, where others would acquit you. But, indee

nd thick, to her child's eyes. Lucia had shed few tears in her life. Until lately she had known no cause for them; and lately they had not come. With dry eyes and throb

months hence, all, as regards ourselves, will be just as it has been. We must not, through a blind fear of one calamity, put ourselves in the way of another. Neit

d failed so suddenly that Lucia looked up. She sprang to her feet, but just in time. The o