Page:The New Penelope.djvu/246



"Mr. Rice, I am told they have not buried the man they hung, so shockingly, the other day. They certainly will not leave him there?" she added, with a shudder.

"I don't know—I suppose," stammered Sam, "it is their way, with them fellows."

"But you will not allow it? You cannot allow it!"—excitedly.

"I couldn't prevent them," said Sam, quite humbly.

"Mr. Rice," and her voice was at once a command and an entreaty, "you can and must prevent it. You are not afraid? I will go with you—this very night—and will help you. Don't say you will not; for I cannot sleep until it is done. I have not slept for a week."

She looked so white and so wild, as she uttered this confession, that Sam would have been the wretch he was not, to refuse her. So he said:

"Don't you fret. I'll bury him, if it troubles you so. But you needn't go along. You couldn't; it's too far, and you're too weak,"—seeing how she trembled.

"I am not weak—only nervous. I prefer to go along. But we must be secret, I suppose? Oh!"—with a start that was indeed "nervous."

"Yes, we must be secret," said Sam; and he looked as if he did not half like the business, but would not refuse.

"You are a good man, Mr. Rice, and I thank you." And with that, Mrs. Dolly Page caught up one of his hands, and kissing it hastily, began to cry, as she walked quickly away.

"Don't cry, and don't go until I have promised to do whatever you ask, if it will make you well again," Sam said, following her to the door.

"Then call for me to take a walk with you to-night. The moon is full, but no one will observe us. They would not think of our going there,"—with another shudder—and she slipped away from his detaining hand.

That evening Mr. Samuel Rice and Mrs. Page took a walk by moonlight. Laughing gossips commented on it after