Sally half rose in bed. Her very heart seemed faint within her as she gazed on all this hateful reminder of what the day held in store, and with a quick sob she buried her face in her hands. As she sat thus--a tearful, sobbing figure--surely a strange posture for a prospective bride on her bridal morn, she heard a horse galloping swiftly along the road, and as the sound came nearer, she found her attention gradually absorbed by it. There seemed something of undue haste in the rider's speed. A moment later the winded animal stopped at the toll-house gate, while a loud knock quickly summoned Mrs. Brown to the door. Sally's alert ear caught the sound of a negro's voice without, speaking rapidly and excitedly, then a sharp exclamation from the toll-taker followed. The listening bride-elect could not distinguish the negro's hurried words, nor guess the import of his message, but finally she caught one single word that her mother uttered, and that word was--"murdered." Scarcely had it reached the girl's strained attention, when she sprang hurriedly out of bed, and catching up her wedding dress threw it hastily over her shoulders. Then her strength seemed suddenly to go, and she stood trembling and white, her eyes fixed on the door of her room in a vacant stare, her mind a blank to all surroundings. Her mother found her thus when she came into the room a few moments later, visibly agitated. "You heard it then?" she said huskily, looking into Sally's terror-stricken face. "He could not have done it!" gasped Sally, brokenly. "It was only an idle threat," she added, her voice sinking to a whisper. "Of course he didn't do it!" exclaimed her mother, catching only her daughter's first words. "He was murdered--murdered in cold blood!" The girl opened her mouth as if to speak again, but the sound crumbled to unintelligible murmurs, as the fear of uttering words no ear must ever hear flashed through her bewildered mind, so she stood looking blankly at her mother, with wide-open eyes of horror, while the color fled from her face, leaving a ghastly pallor instead. All the dreadful interval she was thinking of Milton Derr rather than his victim, and she started like a guilty thing at her mother's next words: "There's but one person in the whole wide world who could have done this, to my thinkin', an' that's Milt Derr!" CHAPTER XXVIII. Throughout the day there seemed an interminable passing the New Pike gate. Many stopped to condole with its inmates, a few through genuine sympathy, a greater number urged by a secret desire to see how the bride-elect bore up under the dire misfortune that had come almost with the suddenness of the lightning's stroke. The curiosity of these was baffled, for the girl shut herself closely in her own room, and denied herself to all.