He crossed the street and disappeared into the low and elderly residence of his parents. "Alas! alas!" exclaimed a grave and gentle old man. "That Andrew Zane should not be here to meet a charge like this! But I'll not believe it till I have prayed with my God." Within the Zane residence all was as in other houses on funeral eves. In the front parlor, ready for an inquest or an undertaker, lay the late master of the place, laid out, and all the visitors departed except his housekeeper, Agnes, and her friend, "Podge" Byerly. The latter was a sunny-haired and nimble little lady, under twenty years of age, who taught in one of the public schools and boarded with her former school-mate, Agnes Wilt. Agnes was an orphan of unknown parentage, by many supposed to have been a niece or relative of Mr. Zane's deceased wife, whose place she took at the head of the table, and had grown to be one of the principal social authorities in Kensington. In Reverend Mr. Van de Lear's church she was both teacher and singer. The young men of Kensington were all in love with her, but it was generally understood that she had accepted Andrew Zane, and was engaged to him. Andrew was not dissipated, but was fond of pranks, and so restive under his father's positive hand that he twice ran away to distant seaports, and thus incurred a remarkable amount of intuitive gossip, such as belongs to all old settled suburban societies. This occasional firmness of character in the midst of a generally light and flexible life, now told against him in the public mind. "He has nerve enough to do anything desperate in a pinch," exclaimed the very wisest. "Didn't William Zane find him out once in the island of Barbadoes grubbing sugar-cane with a hoe, and the thermometer at 120 in the shade? And didn't he swear he'd stay there and die unless concessions were made to him, and certain things never brought up again? Didn't even his iron-shod father have to give way before he would come home? Ah! Andrew is light-hearted, but he is an Indian in self-will!" To-night Agnes was in the deepest grief. Upon her, and only her, fell the whole burden of this double crime and mystery, ten times more terrible that her lover was compromised and had disappeared. "Go to bed, Podge!" said Agnes, as the clock in the engine-house struck midnight. "Oblige me, my dear! I cannot sleep, and shall wait and watch. Perhaps Andrew will be here." "I can't leave you up, Aggy, and with that thing so near." She locked toward the front parlor, where, behind the folding-doors, lay the dead. "I have no fear of _that_. He was always kind to me. My fears are all in this world. O _darling_!" She burst into sobs. Her friend kissed her again and again, and knew that feelings between love and crime extorted that last word. "Aggy," spoke the light-hearted girl, "I know that you cannot help loving him, and as long as he is loved by you I sha'n't believe him guilty. Must I really leave you here?"