A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 | Page 7

piece of strange and horrible news to tell.
Mrs. Costello had left the room for a moment and Lucia was alone, sitting rather drearily looking into the fire, with her work fallen into her lap, when Margery came in.
"Miss Lucia, there's an awful thing happened."
"What, Margery?" Lucia half smiled, for Margery loved marvels, and made much of them.
"Doctor Morton is dead."
"Impossible! Hush, don't say it."
"It is true, miss. This afternoon."
"But how? It is incredible."
"He was found, Miss Lucia, lying dead by the roadside a piece beyond Dawson's mill. And they found the man that did it."
"You don't mean to say that he had been--" she stopped, shuddering.
"Murdered. Yes," and Margery went into all the details she had heard from her gossip.
Mrs. Costello, attracted by the tone of their voices, had come to the door between the parlour and her bedroom, and stood there listening. Both she and Lucia, who, like every one else except perhaps his wife, had heard of the doctor's proceedings against Clarkson, thought only of him as the murderer until Margery finished her recital with--
"It all comes of having them savages of Indians about. I never could abide the sight of them."
Lucia caught a glimpse of her mother's face. She felt her own muscles stiffen with fear. With desperate strength she steadied her voice.
"What do you mean about Indians?" she said.
"It is an Indian as done it," Margery answered half indignant. "There's no white man, let him be ever such a brute, would have chopped the body up like that."
"You said they had taken the murderer?"
"They took him, and he's in gaol. Dawson's men knew him. He has been working for Dawson lately. They say he comes from Moose Island. Mr. Strafford would know him most like."
There was nothing further to be asked, and Margery went out of the room, seeing no more than the natural horror on those two white faces of mother and daughter, which dreaded to meet and read the thought, in each other's eyes.
It was for this, then, that they had delayed their journey. Neither doubted for a moment the guilt of the wretched creature who was the haunting terror and 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 over the dead, cut down in the very beginning of life, or to think of the desolate and widowed bride meeting her first grief in the unnatural guise of murder.
Mrs. Costello came back to her chair by the fireside. She could no longer take her fears and anxieties into the solitude of her own room, and hide them there. There was both pain and comfort in knowing that Lucia now shared with her every additional weight--even this last, which she scarcely yet comprehended. 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, must it not be known now? become the common gossip of the country, of the people who had called them friends? Each felt instinctively that their thoughts were running on in the same channels, each shrank from words. Yet, it was needful to consult, to ask each other the question, "What shall we do?"
At last Mrs. Costello roused herself.
"We must put off our journey," she said, with a smothered sigh, which, indeed, had nearly been a groan.
Lucia looked up.
"It may not be true," she answered, knowing that there was no need to say what "it" was--the idea which had seized upon both their minds with so deadly a grasp.
"It may not, God grant it! But we must know; and if it is, I ought to be here."
"Mother, you cannot. It will kill you."
Mrs. Costello smiled, the wan smile of long-taxed patience.
"No," she said, "I think not. Life is hard for both of us, hardest perhaps for you, darling, just now, but I have no thought that it is over yet for either of us."
Lucia came and knelt down in her old place by her mother's side. It always seemed as if thus close together, able to speak to each other as much by caresses as by words, they were both stronger, and could look more calmly at the calamities which threatened them with every evil except that of separation.
"You will write to Mr. Strafford?" Lucia asked.
"Yes; but first we must know certainly."
"And how to do that?"
"There will be no difficulty to-morrow. Mr. Leigh is sure to hear the particulars. I will go and ask him about them."
"You do not mean to tell him?"
"No; it will be easy enough without that, to ask about a subject