es of the late Milton Gilson, Esq., was partly
under water. Swollen by incessant rains, Cat Creek had spilled over its
banks an angry flood which, after scooping out unsightly hollows
wherever the soil had been disturbed, had partly subsided, as if ashamed
of the sacrilege, leaving exposed much that had been piously concealed.
Even the famous Gilson monument, the pride and glory of Mammon Hill, was
no longer a standing rebuke to the "viper brood"; succumbing to the
sapping current it had toppled prone to earth. The ghoulish flood had
exhumed the poor, decayed pine coffin, which now lay half-exposed, in
pitiful contrast to the pompous monolith which, like a giant note of
admiration, emphasized the disclosure.

To this depressing spot, drawn by some subtle influence he had sought
neither to resist nor analyze, came Mr. Brentshaw. An altered man was
Mr. Brentshaw. Five years of toil, anxiety, and wakefulness had dashed
his black locks with streaks and patches of gray, bowed his fine figure,
drawn sharp and angular his face, and debased his walk to a doddering
shuffle. Nor had this lustrum of fierce contention wrought less upon his
heart and intellect. The careless good humor that had prompted him to
accept the trust of the dead man had given place to a fixed habit of
melancholy. The firm, vigorous intellect had overripened into the mental
mellowness of second childhood. His broad understanding had narrowed to
the accommodation of a single idea; and in place of the quiet, cynical
incredulity of former days, there was in him a haunting faith in the
supernatural, that flitted and fluttered about his soul, shadowy,
batlike, ominous of insanity. Unsettled in all else, his understanding
clung to one conviction with the tenacity of a wrecked intellect. That
was an unshaken belief in the entire blamelessness of the dead Gilson.
He had so often sworn to this in court and asserted it in private
conversation--had so frequently and so triumphantly established it by
testimony that had come expensive to him (for that very day he had paid
the last dollar of the Gilson estate to Mr. Jo. Bentley, the last
witness to the Gilson good character)--that it had become to him a sort
of religious faith. It seemed to him the one great central and basic
truth of life--the sole serene verity in a world of lies.

On that night, as he seated himself pensively upon the prostrate
monument, trying by the uncertain moonlight to spell out the epitaph
which