Part One Chapter 14 The Effect of the Story

After the first great shock of surprise, when the word murderer dropped from his lips, and he reproached his sister so harshly and unreasonably, Burton Jerrold stood with folded arms, and a gloomy, unsympathetic face, as immovable at first as if he had been a stone, and listened to the tale as repeated by his father. But when the tragic part was reached, and he saw the dead man on the floor, his sister crouching in the corner of the room, with Rover at her side, the rude coffin, the open grave, and the secret midnight burial, his breath came in long, shuddering gasps, and the perspiration stood in great drops upon his forehead and about his pallid lips. And when his father said, "I buried him here in this room, under this bed, where I have slept ever since, and he is there now," he started backward as suddenly as if the ghost of the peddler had risen from the floor and confronted him. Then, staggering forward, he would have fallen if Mr. Sanford had not caught him by the arm and supported him a moment.

Bringing him a chair, the clergyman said to him, pityingly: "Sit down, Mr. Jerrold, and try to compose yourself. You are not in fault: no one can blame you."

"No, no, I know it; but it hurts me just the same. The disgrace! I can never be happy again. Oh, Hannah, why did you let him tell me? I cannot bear it, I cannot!" the wretched Burton moaned, and his father replied: "Your sister has borne it for thirty-one years. Are you less brave than she?"