Dr. Rumsey's Patient Part 43

"I think this young woman far too unwell to leave the house," he said--"can you have a room prepared for her here?"

"Certainly," said Margaret; she went up to Hetty and laid one of her hands on her shoulder.

"Before Hetty leaves the room, there is something to be said on her own account," said the Squire.

He then related in a few words the tragedy which had taken place at the Gable Farm. While he was speaking, Hetty suddenly staggered to her feet and faced them.

"If what I have told to-night will really save you, Squire, then nothing else matters," she said; "I'm not afeared now, for ef I 'ave saved you at last, nothing matters,"--her face grew ghastly white, she tumbled in a heap to the floor.

The doctor, Margaret, and the Squire rushed to her a.s.sistance, but when they raised her up she was dead.

"Heart disease," said Rumsey, afterward, "accelerated by shock."

A few more words can finish this strange story. At the Squire's own request, Mr. Cuthbert took the necessary steps for his arrest, and Rumsey hurried to town to get the interference of the Home Secretary in the case of Everett, who was suffering for Awdrey's supposed crime in Portland prison. The doctor had a long interview with one of the officials at the Home Office, and disclosed all the queer circ.u.mstances of the case. Everett, according to the Queen's Prerogative, received in due course a free pardon for the crime he had never committed, and was restored to his mother and his friends once again.

Awdrey's trial took place almost immediately afterward at Salisbury. The trial was never forgotten in that part of the country, and was the one topic of conversation for several days in the length and breadth of England. So remarkable and strange a case had never before been propounded for the benefit of the jury, but it was evident that the very learned Judge who conducted the trial was from the first on the side of the prisoner.

Hetty's all-important deposition made a great sensation; her evidence was corroborated by Mrs. Armitage, and when Rumsey appeared as a witness he abundantly proved that Awdrey had completely forgotten the deed of which he had been guilty. His thrilling description of his patient's strange case was listened to with breathless attention by a crowded court. The trial lasted for two days, during which the anxiety of all Awdrey's friends can be better imagined than described. At the end of the trial, the jury returned a verdict of "Not Guilty." In short, his strange case had been abundantly proved: he had done what he did without intent to kill and simply as a means of self-defence.

On the evening of his return to Grandcourt, he and Margaret stood in the porch together side by side. It was a moonlight night, and the whole beautiful place was brightly illuminated.

"Robert," said the wife, "you have lived through it all--you will now take a fresh lease of life."

He shook his head.

"It is true that I have gone through the fire and been saved," he said, "but there is a shadow over me--I can never be the man I might have been."

"You can be a thousand times better," she replied with flas.h.i.+ng eyes, "for you have learned now the bitter and awful lesson of how a man may fall, rise again, and in the end conquer."

THE END.