The Bride of the Tomb, and Queenie's Terrible Secret

The anguish of the liar's doom!
He hears a voice none else may hear,
It bids his burning spirit pause;
It bids thee, murderer! appear
Where angels plead the victim's cause!"

Almost a year had passed since the tragic death of unhappy Sydney Lyle. Now outraged justice was about to avenge her death.

Conviction had followed swiftly upon the murderer's arrest and imprisonment.

When he had left poor Jennie Thorn, his betrayed and ruined victim, fainting upon the floor, with his demoniacal words ringing in her ears, he had little dreamed how and when he should meet her again.

Perhaps he thought she would pass silently from his life as other wronged ones had done, and never be seen or heard of again.

Not the slightest premonition of evil had come to tell him that the hatred he had stirred to life in her once loving heart would pursue him to the scaffold.

Yet so it was, and Jennie Thorn had stood up in the witness-box and given, under oath, the testimony that had cost him his life—had given it gladly, triumphantly, without one thrill of pity or regard for the man she had once loved and trusted.

Well, it was all over now—the trial was a thing of the past—to-morrow the sentence of the law would be carried out and his neck would be broken upon the scaffold.

Many a time when he thought of it now with a sick and shuddering horror, he recalled the angry words that Queenie Lyle had spoken to him years ago:

"They cannot be drowned who are born to be hung."

His reckless, wicked career was over. He had cheated men of their substance at the gaming-table, he had robbed women of what was dearer, their peace and honor, without a thought of the retribution that would fall on him from the God he had offended.

But now when the priest came to him and told him solemnly and sadly what terrors awaited him if he died unrepentant, remorse and terror struck their terrible fangs into his guilty heart.

"I have done many wrongs that nothing can ever set right, father," he said humbly to the meek priest. "But there is one black falsehood hanging heavy on my heart, one sin I may in some little way atone for. Will you send Lawrence Ernscliffe to see me to-night? I will tell him how cruelly I wronged the lovely woman he married and how pure and innocent she was then and ever. And Jennie Thorn, father. Will you ask her to come and see me? I will beg her to forgive me."

"I will send Captain Ernscliffe to you, my son, if he will come, but Jennie Thorn—that is impossible!"

"Is she so bitter and unrelenting, then!" said the prisoner, sadly.

"Let us hope not," said the gentle priest. "But she is gone away, my son.

"Immediately after your trial and conviction she left the United States and returned to England as the wife of the detective who effected your arrest."

The prisoner sighed and bent his head.

The priest bowed over him a moment, murmured a benediction and passed out through the heavy iron door that shut Leon Vinton in forever from the busy, beautiful world.

CHAPTER XLII

A few hours later the heavy iron door was unlocked, then clanged together again, shutting Lawrence Ernscliffe in alone with the condemned prisoner.

They looked at each other in blank silence for a minute, then the visitor said coldly:

"You sent for me?"

"Yes, I sent for you," said the prisoner, eagerly. "I have wronged you and would make reparation before—before to-morrow."

The fire of rage and hatred that flared up in the listener's eyes was dreadful to behold.

"You lied to me—how dared you do it?" he exclaimed, hoarsely. "Did I not say I would have your life if I found you out?"

"The few hours of life that remain to me are not worth your vengeance," was the quiet reply. "Sit down, Captain Ernscliffe, I would speak to you of your wife."

He pointed to a chair, but the visitor shook his head.

"No, I prefer standing. I can scarcely breathe the same air with you, Leon Vinton! Speak quickly."

"Do not look on me as your enemy now, Captain Ernscliffe," said the prisoner, deprecatingly. "I stand apart from my fellow-men as a condemned criminal about to be executed.

"Think of me as a wretched sinner trying to make peace with those whom I have wronged that I may plead for pardon before my offended God."

Captain Ernscliffe bowed silently, and the angry flash in his dark eyes faded out at the melancholy tone and air of the frightened and wretched criminal.

"I lied to you when I told you that I did not marry Queenie Lyle," said Leon Vinton, looking down and speaking in a low, hoarse voice.

"The day she ran away with me I married her, and the certificate was placed in her hands.

"She thought she was my wife, but the pretended minister who performed the ceremony was only a boon companion of mine who had served me before in such an accommodating manner.

"It was the merest farce, but Queenie thought she was my legal wife.

"She would not have gone with me else. She was as pure and innocent as an angel."

He paused a moment, but he did not look up. He could not bear to meet the tiger glare in the eyes of the man before him. Clearing his throat nervously, he continued:

"I lived with her a year, and then we mutually wearied of each other.

"Her keen intuition soon showed her that she had been deceived in me, and that I was far different from the ideal which she had placed on a lofty pedestal and worshiped for awhile as a god among men.

"She scorned me then, and I hated her because she had found me out. In my rage I told her the truth, and then I tried to kill her."

"My God!" Captain Ernscliffe muttered, clenching his hands as though he would have torn the villain limb from limb.

"I thought I had killed her," pursued Vinton. "I strangled her with both my hands.

"I threw her down and trampled upon her beautiful face that had been her ruin.

"I hurriedly dug her a shallow grave, covered her over with the wet earth and leaves, and hastened back to the cottage by the river where we had lived together."

"Fiend!" thundered Captain Ernscliffe, springing furiously upon him.

The prisoner, chained as he was, could offer no resistance to his infuriated assailant. He did not even utter a cry.

But all in a moment Captain Ernscliffe remembered himself, and drew back before he had struck the fatal blow he had meditated. He would not harm a defenseless man.