hite dress and hat,
for reasons that he would explain later, and to be veiled heavily,
that to the young man who would put her on the train, and who had seen
Jennie Brice only once, she was to be Jennie Brice; to say as little
as possible and not to raise her veil. Her further instructions were
simple: to go to the place at Horner where Jennie Brice had planned
to go, but to use the name of "Bellows" there. And after she had been
there for a day or two, to go as quietly as possible to New York. He
gave her the address of a boarding-house where he could write her, and
where he would join her later.

He reasoned in this way: That as Alice Murray was to impersonate
Jennie Brice, and Jennie Brice hiding from her husband, she would
naturally discard her name. The name "Bellows" had been hers by a
previous marriage and she might easily resume it. Thus, to establish
his innocence, he had not only the evidence of Howell and Bronson that
the whole thing was a gigantic hoax; he had the evidence of Howell
that he had started Jennie Brice to Horner that Monday morning, that
she had reached Horner, had there assumed an incognito, as Mr.
Pitman would say, and had later disappeared from there, maliciously
concealing herself to work his undoing.

In all probability he would have gone free, the richer by a hundred
dollars for each week of his imprisonment, but for two things: the
flood, which had brought opportunity to his door, had brought Mr
Holcombe to feed Peter, the dog. And the same flood, which should have
carried the headless body as far as Cairo, or even farther on down the
Mississippi, had rejected it in an eddy below a clay bluff at
Sewickley, with its pitiful covering washed from the scar.

Well, it is all over now. Mr Ladley is dead, and Alice Murray, and
even Peter lies in the yard. Mr Reynolds made a small wooden cross
over Peter's grave, and carved "Till we meet again" on it. I dare say
the next flood will find it in Molly Maguire's kitchen.

Mr Howell and Lida are married. Mr Howell inherited some money, I
believe, and what with that and Lida declaring she would either marry
him in a church or run off to Steubenville, Ohio, Alma had to consent.
I went to the wedding and stood near the door, while Alma swept in, in
lavender chiffon and rose point lace. She has not improved with age,
has Alma. But Lida? Lida, under my mother's wedding veil, with her
eyes like stars, seeing no one in the church in all that throng but