Her weeping friend turned up her face to give the mandatory kiss, and Podge was gone. Agnes sat in solitude, with her hands folded and her heart filled with unutterable tender woe, that so much causeless cloud had settled upon the home of her refuge. She could not experience that relief many of us feel in deep adversity, that it is all illusion, and will in a moment float away like other dreams. Brought to this house an orphan, and twice deprived of a mother's love, she had only entered woman's estate when another class of cares beset her. Her beauty and sweetness of disposition had brought her more lovers than could make her happy. There was but one on whom she could confer her heart, and this natural choice had drawn around her the perils which now overwhelmed them all. Accepting the son, she incurred the father's resentment upon both; for he, the dead man yonder, had also been her lover. "Oh, my God!" exclaimed the anguished woman, kneeling by her chair and laying her cheek upon it, while only such tears as we shed in supreme moments saturated her handkerchief, "what have I done to make such misery to others? How sinful I must be to set son and father against each other! Yet, Heavenly Father, I can but love!" There was a cracking of something, as if the dead man in the great, black parlor had carried his jealousy beyond his doom and was breaking from his coffin to upbraid her. A door burst open in the dining-room, which was behind her, and then the dining-room door also unclosed, and was followed by a cold, graveyard draft. A moment of superstition possessed Agnes. "Guard me, Saviour," she murmured. At the dining-room threshold, advancing a little over the sill, as if to rush upon her, was the figure of a man, dressed, head to foot, in sailor's garments--heavy woollens, comforter, tarpaulin overalls, and knit cap. He looked at her an instant, standing there, shivering, and then he retired a pace or two and closed the door to the cellar, by which he had entered the house. Even this little movement in the intruder had something familiar about it. He advanced again, directly and rapidly, toward her, but she did not scream. He threw both arms around her, and she did not cry. Something had entered with that bold figure which extinguished all crime and superstition in the monarchy of its presence--Love. A kiss, as fervent and long as only the reunited ever give with purity, drew the soul of the suspected murderer and his sweetheart into one temple. "Agnes," he whispered hoarsely, when it was given, "they have followed me hard to-night. Every place I might have resorted to is watched. All Kensington--my oldest friends--believe me guilty! I cannot face it. With this kiss I must go." "Oh, Andrew, do not! Here is the place to make your peace; here take your stand and await the worst."