"He didn’t! He was as innocent as I, who was then unborn. Listen while I tell you. There was in town a dissipated, good-natured fellow, named Heyward, who had sometimes taught singing-school, and sometimes fiddled for country dances. No one knew how he managed to subsist, for he dressed well, traveled a great deal, and was very liberal with his money, when he had any. Still none suspected him of dishonesty; he did not know enough for that, they said. Everybody liked him, and when on that night he came to our house, apparently intoxicated, and asked for a shelter, grandfather bade him stay, and assigned him a back room in which was an outer door. In the morning he was, or seemed to be, still in a drunken sleep. Your father brought the news of the robbery, and while he talked he looked suspiciously at mine, especially when my mother said innocently: "’The burglars must have tried this house, too, for I woke in the night, and finding my husband gone, called to him to know where he was. Presently he came in, saying he thought he heard a noise and got up to find what it was.’ "When she said this Mr. Graham changed color, and pointing to my father’s shoes, which stood upon the hearth, he asked: "’How came these so muddy? It was not raining at bedtime last night.’ "This was true. A heavy storm had arisen after ten and subsided before twelve, so that the shoes must have been worn since that hour, as there was fresh dirt still upon them. The robber had been tracked to our door, while there were corresponding marks from our door to the bank. My father’s shoes just fitted in these tracks, for they measured them with the wretched man looking on in a kind of torpid apathy, as if utterly unable to comprehend the meaning of what he saw; but when Richard, his best friend, whispered to him softly, ’Confess it, Seth. Give up the money and it won’t go so hard against you,’ the truth burst upon him, and he dropped to the ground like one scathed with the lightning’s stroke. For hours he lay in that death-like swoon, and when he came back to consciousness he was guarded by the officers of the law. They led him off in the care of a constable, he all the time protesting his innocence, save at intervals when he refused to speak, but sat with a look upon his face as if bereft of reason.