d me
everything, and I feel like a new man. Even the--the--the thing father
did, does not seem to me quite as it did. Would you mind telling me
again the particulars of the quarrel?--how it commenced, I mean--nothing
more."

He had risen as he was talking, and going into the bedroom, threw back
the heavy curtains, and opening the windows and blinds, sat down in his
father's chair, while Hannah stood beside him and told him how both men
had drank until their reason was clouded, and how the peddler had called
her father a cheat and a liar, and struck him first, and how--But here
her brother stopped her, and said:

"That will do. I am satisfied that what father did was done in
self-defense, and so the world would have said, and acquitted him, too,
I am sure. I almost wish you had told at the time. We should have lived
it down, though I might never have married Geraldine and never have had
Grey. No, sister, you did right, and having kept it so long, we must
keep it still. No use to unearth it now, though I would give half my
life and every dollar I own--yes, I'd give everything except my boy
Grey, to know it had never been there," and he pointed to the corner of
the room, where the bed was still standing, and under which was the
hidden grave.

"Bessie is willing we should tell, and if I thought we ought, I should
be willing, too," Hannah said, but her brother shook his head.

"It can do no good to any one, so let the poor man rest in peace. You
have found his heirs and restitution can be made; the money is safe in
the bank."

"And now I must go, for Geraldine is waiting for me," Burton said,
adding, as be stood a moment by the door: "I feel twenty years younger
than I did, and you, Hannah--why, you look thirty years younger, and are
really a handsome woman for your age. By the way, shall you live here,
or with Grey?"

"I don't know yet where I shall live," Hannah replied, and her cheeks
were scarlet as she said good-by and watched him as he drove away.

CHAPTER XIX.

JOEL ROGERS' MONUMENT.

It was a very merry party which met next day at the farm-house, and Mr.
Jerrold was the merriest of them all, though he could not understand
exactly why he was so light-hearted and glad. The fact that Joel Rogers
died by his father's hand remained the same, but it did not now affect
him as it once had done. Bessie seemed to have taken all the shame and
pain away. He was very fond of her, always calling her daughter wh