“Sao much the wuss, Seth. It _was_ to be! Nothin’ could a’ stopped it. Thet old witch, M’tildy Warren, is right. There’s a cuss on aour fam’ly. Here, almost inside tew years, Sissly’s gone, ’n’ Lemuel’s gone, ’n’ naow its poor Albert! ’N’ he was gittin’ so like his grandfather, the Senator, tew, gittin’ to look like him, ’n’ ack like him; I kin remember my father----” Seth had left the room, with soft footsteps. He would go at once to the scene of his brother’s death. At the outside door, as he opened it, he stood face to face with Annie. She gave him her hand silently. Her face was paler than he had ever seen it before, and she looked on the ground, after the first little start of surprise at the meeting, instead of into his face. “You have heard?” he whispered. “Yes. Isn’t it awful?” “Will you go upstairs and see Aunt Sabrina? She is in her room. I think the sight of you would do her good.” “Yes. What a terrible shock it must be to her. And----?” “The widow? You’ll find her in the parlor. Strange enough, she was weeping her eyes out when I last saw her.” He could not keep the bitterness out of his tone. “Poor woman!” was all that Annie could find it in her heart to murmur, as Seth passed her on his gloomy errand, and she entered the house of mourning. CHAPTER XXVI.--THE CORONER. THERE was a short cut by which, using a rough back road across the hill, and then a dimly-marked bridle path down the bed of the creek, one could get to Tallman’s ravine in less than an hour on foot. Seth saddled the black mare, and brought her up on the meadow plateau overlooking the gulf, panting and white on breast and barrel with foam, inside fifteen minutes. He had galloped furiously, unable to think save in impatient flashes, and reckless alike of his own neck and the beast’s wind and limbs. He reined up the plunging mare at the very edge of the ravine, where some score of farmers and boys were standing clustered under the trees, watching his excited approach. As he threw himself from the saddle among them, and looked swiftly from face to face for the right one to speak to first, the attention of the elder bystanders concentrated itself upon the mare. They would have given their foremost thoughts to her anyway, for they were owners of livestock even before they were neighbors, and her splashed and heated condition appealed in protest to their deepest feeling--reverential care for good horseflesh. But there was something more: the mare was strangely, visibly agitated at the sight of the glen before her, and reared back with outstretched trembling forelegs, lifted ears, and distended, frightened eyes. “By Cracky!” cried Zeke Tallman himself, “don’t it beat natur’! This ’ere mare knaows what’s happened! Look at her! She senses what’s layin’ down there at the bottom!”