om home, he advanced
with a cheerful haste, not knowing that his only daughter then lay dead
in his friend's house, and that it was for her funeral that the people
were collecting in the green square at the end of the street. He was so
pale, broken, and decrepit that few knew him. But there was one old
neighbor who recognized him and was kind enough to lead him into a quiet
place, and there tell him that he had arrived just too late to see his
darling daughter alive. The shock, instead of prostrating the old
soldier, seemed to nerve him afresh and put new vigor into his limbs. He
proceeded, almost on a run, to Poindexter's house, and arrived just as
the funeral cortege was issuing from the door. And now happened a
strange thing. The young girl had been laid on an open bier, and was
being carried by six sturdy lads to her last resting place. As the
father's eye fell on her young body under its black pall, a cry of
mortal anguish escaped him, and he sank on his knees right in the line
of the procession.

"At the same minute another cry went up, this time from behind the bier,
and John Poindexter could be seen reeling at the side of Felix
Cadwalader, who alone of all present (though he was the youngest and the
least) seemed to retain his self-possession at this painful moment.
Meanwhile the bereaved father, throwing himself at the side of the bier,
began tearing away at the pall in his desire to look upon the face of
her he had left in such rosy health four years before. But he was
stopped, not by Poindexter, who had vanished from the scene, but by
Felix, the cold, severe-looking boy who stood like a guard behind his
sister. Reaching out a hand so white it was in itself a shock, he laid
it in a certain prohibitory way on the pall, as if saying no. And when
his father would have continued the struggle, it was Felix who
controlled him and gradually drew him into the place at his own side
where a minute before the imposing figure of Poindexter had stood; after
which the bearers took up their burden again and moved on.

"But the dramatic scene was not over. As they neared the churchyard
another procession, similar in appearance to their own, issued from an
adjoining street, and Evelyn's young lover, who had died almost
simultaneously with herself, was brought in and laid at her side. But
not in the same grave: this was noticed by all, though most eyes and
hearts were fixed upon Cadwalader, who had escaped his loathsome prison