“’Cause she took more intrust in him, that’s why!” remarked Dan bluntly, adding with a certain wistfulness: “Lemme run after her, Miss Tab, and bring her back! She cain’t be gone very fur; the smoke will git in her eyes, so’s she cain’t find her way!” But at that moment the whistle of the east-bound express train sounded loud and clear, and Lydia cried, with smothered triumph: “It’s too late, she’s gone! There’s the train, now. Eva’s off to her rich father in New York, and we have seen the last of her, thank goodness!” “And I’m sorry for’t! She was the nicest one of you all!” Dan exclaimed, drawing his rough sleeve across his eyes. The girls started to giggle at his self-betrayal, but they remembered just in time that this was a house of illness and death, and Patty said sharply: “Hurry to the kitchen, Dan, and heat some water, quick, to bathe gran’ther’s feet. It’s the way Eva always did in his worst spells.” Not a touch of pity stirred their hearts for Eva, thus cruelly banished from the only home she had ever known, to seek refuge with an unknown father, from whom her very existence had heretofore been carefully concealed. They remembered nothing but their spiteful jealousy because she had always been her grandfather’s pet, and because of her aversion to Terry that she had but vainly tried to conquer or conceal. They thought they were only paying off old scores by the terrible silence that was staining with dishonor both the living and the dead. It was blackest treachery to keep still over the dread mistake that had sent two promising young men to bloody graves, and an innocent young girl into cruel exile, when a word from their lips could have cleared Ludington’s fame, and recalled the victim of circumstances from her martyrdom. But those two young girls, barely nineteen years old, were hard and cruel at heart. They did not choose to save Eva, and bear the blame that must fall on them if they confessed their malevolent scheme to send old Doctor Binks to their cousin’s bedside, when the romantic young girl was expecting a vision of her future husband. They put a seal on their lips, they hardened their hearts, they did not even take the spinster, their whilom ally, into their confidence, fearing lest a certain sense of rugged justice inherent in her nature might lead her to censure them for their silence. They justified themselves by saying to each other that Eva was the same as Terry’s slayer, since her lover had murdered him. Soon the sympathizing neighbors from roundabout farms came in to help and to sympathize, and the men took a turn with the sick man; but as for those two lying stark and ghastly nothing could be done but to wait for the inquest. The news had been quickly carried to Fernside, Doctor Ludington’s home, and it was whispered about that nothing like it had ever been seen--the grief and rage of the old doctor, when they told him his son lay dead in his enemy’s house.