The interment was in the family burying ground, where the first wife lay at rest, and the tall weeds and grasses of the enclosure were trampled by many eager feet. During the services, which were held in the house, the women and children huddled together in the "best room," looking about them with awed, half-frightened faces, as if a ghostly visitant might suddenly stalk forth out some gloomy corner, while the men stood in little groups in the hall, or the Squire's "living room," and when they spoke in low tones, it was mostly of the man within the prison cell, and little of the one within his coffin. The coming of Mrs. Brown, unaccompanied by her daughter, gave new food for comment, and for a time following her arrival, the victim and the accused were both forgotten in the fact of the strange absence of one who might almost be called a "widowed bride." Early that morning, on looking from the toll-house window, the first sight to greet the unhappy girl had been the hearse containing the casket for the Squire coming along the road from the town, and the sight had so unnerved her that she once more shut herself in her room, a prey to harrowing thoughts. Long after the mother had gone to the funeral she sat motionless and dazed, listening in a sort of hopeless apathy to the sound of vehicles rolling by, carrying those to pay their last tribute of respect to the dead; then, after ages, it seemed, she heard the sound of their return, and understood that "earth had been given to earth," and still no widow's weeds were necessary for her, no blinding tears need be shed--in truth, they would have been but a cruel mockery. She felt a profound pity for the one whose life had gone out so quickly, and in so tragic a manner, yet there was a deeper pity, and--God forgive her!--a changeless love in her heart for the poor, unfortunate being, whose insane jealousy had brought him to his present strait. Yet why blame him? She, herself, was the cause of it all. She could not help but remember this; indeed, she did not wish to forget it. It was his great love for her, and her own seeming unworthiness that had wrought his ruin. She was the guilty one in the eye of God, not Milton Derr. A day or two after the funeral, Billy West came by the gate one afternoon on his way from town, and brought word to the unhappy girl that Milton had asked to see her, and begged that she would come to the jail. He had something of importance to say to her. "How does he look? How does he seem to bear up under the strain?" asked Sally, anxiously. "He's broken down considerable," admitted Billy. "He looks ten years older, to my thinkin'. Of course, I said what I could to cheer him up, but I'm afraid he's got himself into a pretty bad box." "I don't believe he did it," affirmed Sally, faintly, but she turned her eyes away as she made the denial.