No answer, save a low, incoherent murmuring, came from the recess. The invalid had lapsed into the lethargy of exhausted nature. As the trio stood by the bedside even this sound ceased. Nothing was to be heard but the labored, unnatural breathing. Isabel placed the candle again upon the shelf. She had not removed her bonnet and wrap, and she turned now irresolutely toward the door. Annie went to her, and silently took her hand. “I forgive you,” she whispered. “Was there anything else? Did you want to speak to me?” “I don’t know what I wanted when I came. Let me go now. Perhaps if I said any more, I should hate myself afterward.” And thus, without a glance at Seth, she went. CHAPTER XXXV.--“SUCH WOMEN ARE!” THE story, such as it is, is told. Before the daily press of the State, which had given great attention to the tragedy in Dearborn County, became fairly aware that a mystery attached to it, the wretched Milton had confessed his crime. He had followed and come up with his employer, who stopped at his call. There was a conversation--then the killing. The prisoner made a weak effort to pretend that there was a quarrel first, and that his deed was in self-defence, but he deceived no one. He had with much difficulty led the grays off the side of the ravine, the murdered man being first thrown over, and the horses and buggy purposely hurled down upon him. There was some angry criticism when it became known that the District Attorney had agreed to accept a plea of murder in the second degree, and the popular explanation--that it was done from motives of consideration for the family--provoked not a few jibes from people who wanted to know why the Fairchilds were any better than other folk. But the course of the law was not affected by this comment, nor did the District Attorney suffer appreciably from it when he came up the succeeding autumn for re-election. The money was all recovered--and, if you have the influence requisite to obtain a visiting pass to New York’s forest-girt prison on the Eastern watershed of the Adirondacks--that terrible subterranean place of woe from which even Siberian gaolers might get some hints of new things in anguish--you may still see a thin, bent, evil-faced wretch dragging out existence in the mines, who once was reckoned a likely man in Dearborn County, and who cast its united vote at the most famous of all Tyre’s Conventions. The funeral of Albert Fairchild will long be remembered in all the section round. More than one State official attended, and there was a vast concourse of lesser political lights, who kept a shrewd eye upon opportunities for profitable discourse with each other, before and after the services, while they put themselves dignifiedly in evidence before the public by getting their names in the local papers.