The man was a-tremble--hands, limbs, body--and his mad eyes seemed to shrink from the woman's gaze. "Oh, God--God--oh, God--" he panted, and fell upon his face across the sofa. They heard a hurrying step running toward the Hendricks house, there came a frightened, choked cry of "Help!" repeated twice, another and another sound of pattering feet came, and five minutes after the quaking man had entered the door the whole neighbourhood seemed to be alive with running figures hurrying silently through the gloom. The thud of feet and the pounding of her heart, and the whimpering of the little man who lay, face down, on the sofa, were the only sounds in her ears. She started to go with the crowd. But Adrian screamed to her to stay. "Oh," he cried, "he sank so softly--he sank so softly--he sank so softly! Oh, God, oh, God--he sank so softly!" And the next conscious record of her memory was that of Neal Ward bursting into the room, crying, "Aunt Molly--Aunt Molly--do you know Mr. Hendricks has committed suicide? They've found him dead with a pistol by his side. I want some whiskey for Miss Hendricks. And they need you right away." But Molly Brownwell, with what composure she could, said, "Adrian is sick, Neal--I can't--I can't leave him now." And she called after Neal as he ran toward the door, "Tell them, Neal, tell them--why I can't come." There was a hum of voices in the air, and the sound of a gathering crowd. Soon the shuffle and clatter of a thousand feet made it evident that the meeting at Barclay Hall had heard the news and was hurrying up the hill. The crowd buzzed for an hour, and Molly and Adrian Brownwell waited speechless together--he face downward on the sofa, she huddled in a chair by the window. And then the crowd broke, slowly, first into small groups that moved away together and then turned in a steady stream and tramped, tramped, tramped down the hill. When the silence had been unbroken a long time, save by the rumble of a buggy on the asphalt or by the footsteps of some stray passerby, the man on the sofa lifted his head, looked at his wife and spoke, "Well, Molly?" "Well, Adrian," she answered, "this is the end, I suppose?" He did not reply for a time, and when he did speak, it was in a dead, passionless voice: "Yes--I suppose so. I can't stay here now." "No--no," she returned. "No, you should not stay here." He sat up and stared vacantly at her for a while and then said, "Though I don't see why I didn't leave years and years ago; I knew all this then, as well as I do now." The wife looked away from him as she replied: "Yes, I should have known you would know. I knew your secret and you--" "My secret," said Adrian, "my secret?" "Yes--that you came North with your inherited money because when you were in the Confederate army you were a coward in some action and could not live among your own people." "Who told you," he asked, "who told you?"