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Computing Essentials 2013 Tim and Linda O’Leary
1
Chapter 7
Input and Output
Lecture Guide
• Competencies
o Define input.
o Describe keyboard entry including the different types of keyboards and keyboard
features.
o Discuss pointing devices including mice, touch screens, joysticks, and styluses.
o Describe scanning devices including optical scanners and card readers.
o Discuss image capturing devices including digital cameras, digital video cameras
and WebCams.
o Define output.
o Discuss monitor features, flat-panel, CRT, e-book readers, digital and interactive
whiteboards, and HDTVs.
o Define printing features as well as ink-jet, laser, cloud printers, dot-matrix,
thermal, plotter, photo, and portable printers.
o Discuss audio and video devices including portable media devices, and Mobile
DTV.
o Define combination input and output devices including fax machines,
multifunctional devices, and Internet telephones.
Chapter Outline
• What is Input?
o Any data or instructions that are used by a computer.
o Can come directly from you or from other sources.
o Input devices are hardware used to translate words, sounds, images, and actions
that people understand into a form that the system unit can process.
• Keyboard Entry
▪ One of the most common ways to input data is by keyboard.
▪ Keyboards convert numbers, letters, and special characters that humans
understand into electrical signals.
▪ Electrical signals from the keyboard are sent to, and processed by, the
system unit.
▪ Most keyboards use an arrangement of keys given the name QWERTY.
▪ Variety of keyboard designs:
• Traditional keyboards—full-sized, rigid, rectangular keyboards
that include function, navigational, and numeric keys.
• Ergonomic keyboards—similar to traditional keyboards. The
keyboard arrangement, however, is not rectangular and a palm rest
is provided. They are designed specifically to alleviate wrist strain
associated with the repetitive movements of typing.
• Wireless keyboards—transmit input to the system unit through
the air. They provide greater flexibility and convenience
• PDA keyboards—miniature keyboards for PDAs used to send e-
mail, create documents, etc.

2
• Virtual keyboards – displays an image of a keyboard on a touch
screen which functions as the actual input device. Virtual
keyboards are common on tablet computers and mobile devices.
▪ Features
• Typewriter keyboard combined with a numeric keypad, used to
enter numbers and arithmetic symbols.
• Many special-purpose keys.
• Toggle keys turn features on or off (ex. CAPS LOCK)
• Combination keys perform an action when held down with another
key (ex. CTRL + another key)
o Pointing Devices
▪ Provide an intuitive interface with the system unit by accepting point
gestures and converting them into machine-readable input.
▪ Wide variety of point devices, including the mouse, joystick, touch screen,
and stylus.
▪ Mice
• Mouse - controls a pointer that is displayed on the monitor.
• The mouse pointer usually appears in the shape of an arrow.
Frequently changes shape, however, depending on the application.
• Can have one, two, or more buttons, which are used to select
command options and to control the mouse pointer on the monitor.
• Some mice have a wheel button that can be rotated to scroll
through information that is displayed on the monitor.
• Variety of mice designs:
o Optical mouse has no moving parts and is currently the
most widely used. It emits and senses light to detect mouse
movement. It can be used on any surface with high precise.
o Mechanical mouse - has a ball on the bottom and is
attached with a cord to the system unit. As you move the
mouse across a smooth surface, or mouse pad, the roller
rotates and controls the pointer on the screen.
o Cordless or wireless mouse is a battery-powered device
that typically uses radio waves or infrared light waves to
communicate with the system unit.
o Devices similar to mice:
▪ Trackball, also known as the roller ball, to control
the pointer by rotating a ball with your thumb.
▪ Touch pads - touch surfaces, or touch pads, to
control the pointer by moving and tapping your
finger on the surface of a pad.
▪ Pointing stick, located in the middle of the
keyboard, to control the pointer by directing the
stick with your finger.
▪ Touch screens
• Allows users to select actions or commands by touching the screen
with a finger or penlike device.
• Are easy to use

3
• Widely used with tablet PCs, netbooks, and smartphones
• Commonly used at restaurants, ATMs, and information centers
• Variety of touch screens:
o Multi-touch screens – touch with more than one finger,
which allows for interactions such as rotating graphical
objects with the hand and zooming in and out by pinching
and stretching the fingers
o Normally used on mobile devices (Apple iPhone), as well
as some notebook computers and desktop monitors.
▪ Joysticks
• Used with computer games. Control game actions by varying the
pressure, speed, and direction of the joystick. Additional controls,
such as buttons and triggers, are used to specify commands or
initiate specific actions.
▪ Stylus
• Penlike device commonly used with tablet PCs and PDAs.
• Uses pressure to draw images on a screen.
• Often a stylus interacts with the computer through handwriting
recognition software which translates handwritten notes into a
form the system unit can process.
▪ Scanning Devices
• Optical scanner, also known simply as a scanner, accepts
documents consisting of text and/or images and converts them to
machine-readable form.
• These devices do not recognize individual letters or images.
Rather, they recognize light, dark, and colored areas that make up
individual letters or images.
• Three basic types of optical scanners:
o Flatbed – image to be scanned is placed on a glass surface
and the scanner records the image from below.
o Document – can scan multipage documents.
Automatically feeds one page of a document at a time
through a scanning surface.
o Portable – typically a hand held device that slides across
the image, making direct contact.
▪ Card Readers
• Cards typically have the user’s name, some type of identification
number, and signature embossed on the card.
• Additionally, encoded information is often stored on the card as
well. Card readers interpret this encoded information.
• Two basic types:
o Magnetic card reader – encoded information is stored on
a thin magnetic strip located on the back of the card. When
the card is swiped through the magnetic card reader, the
information is read.
o Radio frequency card readers - has a small RFID (radio
frequency identification) microchip that contains the

4
user’s encoded information. Whenever the card is passed
within a few inches of the card reader, the user’s
information is read.
▪ Bar Code Readers
• Either handheld wand readers or platform scanners.
• They contain photoelectric cells that scan bar codes printed on
product containers.
• Used with bar code system called the Universal Product Code
(UPC).
▪ Character and Mark Recognition Devices
• Character and mark recognition devices are scanners that are able
to recognize special characters and marks.
• Specialty devices that are essential tools for certain applications.
Three types are:
o Magnetic-ink character recognition (MICR)—used by
banks to automatically read numbers on the bottom of
checks and deposit slips.
o Optical-character recognition (OCR)—uses special
preprinted characters that can be read by a light source and
changed into machine-readable code.
o Optical-mark recognition (OMR) - senses the presence or
absence of a mark, such as a pencil mark, and is often used
to score multiple-choice tests.
o Image Capturing Devices
▪ Image capturing devices create or capture original images. These devices
include:
• Digital cameras - images are recorded digitally on a disk or in the
camera’s memory rather than on film and then downloaded, or
transferred, to your computer or place it on a Web page.
• Digital video cameras record motion digitally on a disk or in the
camera’s memory. Most can take still pictures as well as video.
o Web cameras are specialized digital video cameras that
capture images and send them to a computer for broadcast
over the Internet.
o Audio-Input devices
▪ Audio-input devices convert sounds into a form that can be processed by
the system unit. The most widely used audio-input device is the
microphone.
▪ Voice recognition systems use a microphone, a sound card, and special
software. These systems allow users to operate computers and to create
documents using voice commands. Examples include:
• Dialing features on mobile phones
• Navigation on GPS devices
• Control of car audio systems
• Record dictation
o Making IT Work for you
▪ Webcams and Instant Messaging

5
▪ Review concepts
• What is Output?
o Output is processed data or information, and typically takes the form of text,
graphics, photos, audio, and/or video.
o Output devices are any hardware used to provide or to create output.
o They translate information that has been processed by the system unit into a form
that humans can understand.
o Most widely used output devices are monitors, printers, and audio-output devices.
• Monitors
▪ Most frequently used output device. Also known as display screen
▪ Present visual images of text and graphics.
▪ Output is often referred to as soft copy.
▪ Monitors vary in size, shape, and cost.
▪ Basic distinguishing features include:
• Clarity refers to the quality and sharpness of the displayed images,
and is composed of five elements:
o Resolution - Images are formed on a monitor by a series of
dots or pixels. Resolution is expressed as a matrix of these
dots or pixels. The higher a monitor’s resolution, the
clearer the image produced.
o Dot (pixel) pitch is the distance between each pixel. The
lower the dot pitch, the clearer the images produced.
o Refresh rate indicates how often a displayed image is
updated or redrawn on the monitor. The faster the refresh
rate, the better the quality of images displayed.
o Size or active display area is measured by the diagonal
length of a monitor’s viewing area.
o Aspect ratio is determined by the width of a monitor
divided by it height.
▪ Flat-panel monitors are much thinner and require less power to operate
than CRTs. As a result, flat-panel monitors are rapidly replacing CRTs.
• Almost all of today’s flat-panel monitors are LCD (liquid crystal
display).
• There are two basic types:
o Passive-matrix, or dual-scan monitors, create images by
scanning the entire screen. Requires very little power, but
the clarity of the images is not as sharp.
o Active-matrix or thin film transistor (TFT) monitors do not
scan down the screen; instead, each pixel is independently
activated. They can display more colors with better clarity.
Active-matrix monitors are more expensive and require
more power.
• OLED (organic light-emitting diode) is a newer technology
o Lower power consumption
o Longer battery life
o Thinner displays

6
▪ Cathode-Ray Tubes - Similar to televisions, these monitors are typically
placed directly on the system unit or on the desktop.
• Primary advantages are low cost and excellent resolution.
• Primary disadvantages are that they are bulky, are less energy
efficient, and occupy a considerable amount of space on the
desktop. CRT’s are a serious threat to the environment.
▪ Other Monitors – These monitors are used for more specialized
applications, such as reading books, making presentations, and watching
television.
• Three specialized devices are:
o E-book readers are dedicated, handheld, book-sized
devices that display text and graphics.
▪ Use a special type of screen called electronic paper
(e-paper) that requires power only when changing
pages, and not the entire time a page is displayed on
the screen.
▪ Biggest challenge for e-book readers is tablet PCs.
Tablet PCs can perform a wide variety of other
functions.
o Digital or interactive whiteboards – are specialized
devices with a large display connected to a computer or
projector.
▪ Computer’s desktop is displayed on the digital
whiteboard and controlled using a special pen, a
finger, or some other type of device.
▪ Widely used in classrooms and corporate board
rooms.
o High-definition television (HDTV) - the merger of
microcomputers and television. HDTV delivers a much
clearer and more detailed wide-screen picture than regular
television.
▪ Users can readily freeze video sequences to create
high-quality still images.
▪ Video and images can be digitized, edited, and
stored on disk for later use.
▪ Very useful for graphic artists, designers, and
publishers.
▪ Recent and dramatic advance is 3D HDTV.
▪ Making IT work for you
• Amazon Kindle
• Review e-book readers
o Printers
▪ Translates information that has been processed by the system unit and
presents the information on paper. Printer output is often called hard copy.
Features – Basic distinguishing features include:

7
• Resolution - the clarity of images produced and measured in dpi
(dots per inch). The higher the dpi, the better the quality of images
produced.
• Color capability – provided by most printers today. Users
typically have the option to print either with just black ink or with
color.
• Speed - measured in the number of pages printed per minute.
• Memory – printer memory is used to store printing instructions
and documents waiting to be printed. The more memory in a
printer, the faster it will be able to create large documents.
• Duplex printing – Allows automatic printing on both sides of a
sheet of paper.
▪ Ink-jet printers
• Spray ink at high speed onto the surface of paper.
• The most widely used printers.
• Available in Black only or Color.
• Reliable, quiet, and relatively inexpensive.
• Most costly aspect is replacing ink cartridges.
▪ Laser printers
• Use a laser light beam to produce images with excellent letter and
graphics quality.
• Available in Black only or Color.
• Reliable, quiet, but more expensive than ink-jets.
• Faster than ink-jets and are used in applications requiring high-
quality output.
• Two categories
o Personal – used by single users
o Shared – used by a group of users, typically support color,
and are more expensive
o Other Printers
▪ Cloud printers are printers connected to the Internet that provide printing
services to others on the Internet.
▪ Dot-matrix printers form characters and images using a series of small
pins on a print head.
▪ Thermal printers use heat elements to produce images on heat-sensitive
paper.
▪ Plotters are special-purpose printers for producing maps, images, and
architectural and engineering drawings.
▪ Photo printers are special-purpose printers designed to print photo-
quality images from digital cameras.
▪ Portable printers are designed to work with a notebook computer, and
may be ink-jet or laser printers, print in black and white or color, and
connect with USB or parallel port connections.
• Audio-Output Devices - translate audio information from the computer into sounds that
people can understand.
▪ The most widely used audio-output devices are speakers and headphones.

8
▪ Audio-output devices are used to play music, vocalize translations from
one language to another, and communicate information from the computer
system to users.
▪ Portable media players – also known as digital music players are
electronic devices for storing and playing digital media.
• Popular examples are Apple’s iPod, Creative Zen, and Microsoft
Zune, – See Figure 7-31.
• Combination Input-Output devices
o Many devices combine input and output capabilities. Sometimes this is done to
save space, and other times it is done for very specialized applications.
o Common combined devices include:
▪ Fax Machines - To send a fax (output), these devices scan the image of a
document converting the light and dark areas into a format that can be sent
electronically over standard telephone lines. To receive a fax (input), these
devices reverse the process and print the document (or display the
document on your monitor) using signals received from the telephone line.
▪ Multifunctional devices (MFD), - typically combine the capabilities of a
scanner, printer, fax, and copy machine into one unit
▪ Internet telephones are specialized input and output devices for receiving
and sending voice communication.
• Voice over IP (VOIP) is the transmission of telephone calls over
computer networks. Also known as telephony, Internet telephony,
and IP telephony.
▪ Uses the Internet rather than traditional communication lines to support
voice communication.
• Careers in IT
o Technical writers prepare instruction manuals, technical reports, and other
scientific or technical documents.
o Work for computer software firms, government agencies, or research institutions.
o They translate technical information into easily understandable instructions or
summaries.
o Requires an associate or a college degree in communications, journalism, or
English and a specialization in, or familiarity with, a technical field.
o Annual salary in the range of $46,500 – $76,500.
• A Look to the Future
o Electronic interpretation
▪ The company SpeechGear has developed software called Compadre that
takes verbal statements in one language, converts the statements to text,
translates that verbal statements in one language, converts the statements
to text, translates that text to another language, and then vocalizes the
translated text..
▪ Computers have a difficult time understanding idioms.
▪ They also have difficulty correctly identifying words by context.

9
Teaching Tips
• What is Input?
Input devices are hardware used to translate words, sounds, images, and actions that
people understand into a form that the system unit can process.
o You can emphasize that it is how users put data into the system.
o Keyboard Entry – Students are familiar with most types of keyboards. If they
aren’t then you can use the textbook to view the illustrations.
▪ One of the most common ways to input data is by keyboard
▪ Variety of keyboard designs
• Traditional keyboards—full-sized, rigid, rectangular keyboards
that include function, navigational, and numeric keys. See Figure
7-3.
• Ergonomic keyboards—similar to traditional keyboards. They are
designed specifically to alleviate wrist strain associated with the
repetitive movements of typing. See Figure 7-1. Why are these
keyboards popular?
• Wireless keyboards—transmit input to the system unit through
the air. They provide greater flexibility and convenience
• PDA keyboards—miniature keyboards for PDAs used to send e-
mail, create documents, etc. See Figure 7-2.
• Virtual keyboards – displays an image of a keyboard on a touch
screen
▪ Features
• Typewriter keyboard combined with a numeric keypad
• Toggle keys turn features on or off – Name the toggle keys (Caps
Lock, Number Lock, Scroll lock, etc.)
• Combination keys perform an action when held down with another
key. Discuss ways the CTRL and the Shift key are used.
o Pointing Devices – Most students are familiar with the various pointing devices,
so you can have them list the different types of devices they know and discuss
their uses.
▪ Mice
• Optical
• Mechanical
• Cordless or wireless
▪ Three devices similar to a mouse
• Trackball – also called a rollerball
• Touch pads
• Pointing stick
▪ Touch Screen
• Multi-touch screen – commonly used on mobile devices
▪ Joysticks – input device for games; See Figure 7-10.
▪ Stylus – penlike device commonly used with tablet PCs
• Stylus often used with handwriting recognition software

10
o Scanning Devices Most students are familiar with the various scanning devices,
so you can have them list the different types of devices they know and discuss
their uses.
▪ Optical scanner
• Flatbed
• Document
• Portable
▪ Card Reader
• Magnetic card reader
• Radio frequency card readers
▪ Bar code reader
▪ Character and mark recognition devices
• Magnetic-ink character recognition (MICR)
• Optical-character recognition (OCR)
• Optical-mark recognition (OMR)
o Image Capturing Devices
▪ Digital cameras – The Explorations exercise #1 has the students research
how digital cameras work. This can be used as a lab to accompany the
lecture.
▪ Digital video cameras
• WebCams (Web cameras) – specialized cameras that capture
images and send them to a computer for broadcast
• First, Making It Work For You exercise #1 Webcams and Instant
Messaging. You can use it as a lab by having them configure and
use the software.
• Second, Ethics exercise #1 Webcams can be used as a homework
project to expand on the lab/lecture and delve deeper into ethical
issues.
o Audio-Input devices
▪ Voice Recognition Systems
▪ Voice Recognition can be used as a lab to further the students’ knowledge
on the subject. Ask students to conduct research on the Internet to find
applications where voice recognition systems are being widely used.
• What is Output?
o Most students are familiar with the various output devices, so you can have them
list the different types of devices they know and discuss their uses.
o Monitors
▪ Flat-panel monitors
• Passive-matrix, or dual-scan monitors,
• Active-matrix or thin film transistor (TFT)
• OLED(organic light-emitting diode) is a newer technology
o Lower power consumption
o Longer battery life
o Thinner displays
▪ Cathode-Ray Tubes
• See Figure 7-22

11
• Monitors typically placed directly on the system unit or on the
desktop
• Low cost and excellent resolution
• Have students research how their particular school, city, or town
dispose of obsolete CRTs. Discuss the hazardous materials
contained in these units and the harmful effects on the environment
and people or animals that may become exposed to it.
o Other Monitors
▪ E-book readers – Talk about the new Kindle; find information on the
Internet. What are its advantages/disadvantages?
▪ Digital or interactive whiteboards. Discuss how these devices are being
used in classrooms and corporate board rooms. High-definition
television (HDTV)
• Output is digital
• Technology useful to graphic artists, designers, and publishers
o Printers
▪ Printers translate information that has been processed by the system unit
and present the information on paper.
▪ Features
• Resolution
• Color capability
• Speed
• Memory
• Duplex printing
▪ Ink-jet printers
▪ Laser printers
▪ Other Printers
• Cloud printers – Ask students to discuss the benefits associated
with these types of printers. Do they anticipate the need to use this
type of technology? If so, explain why.
• Dot-matrix printers
• Thermal printers
• Plotters
• Photo printers
• Portable printers
o Audio-Output devices
▪ Speakers
▪ Headphone
▪ Portable media players – Ask students to name or research some of the
best known audio and video players
• Combination Input-Output devices
o Fax Machines
o Multifunctional devices (MFD)
o Internet Telephones
▪ Voice over IP (VoIP) also known as telephony, Internet telephony, and IP
telephony

12
▪ Have the students discuss if they currently use any of the providers
discussed in the text (Ooma, Vonage, MagicJack, and Skype).
•
• Careers in IT
o Technical writers prepare instruction manuals, technical reports, and other
scientific or technical documents.
o Work for computer software firms, government agencies, or research institutions.
o They translate technical information into easily understandable instructions or
summaries.
o Requires a college degree in communications, journalism, or English and a
specialization in, or familiarity with, a technical field.
o Annual salary in the range of $46,500-$76,500.
• A Look to the Future
o Electronic interpretation
▪ This is a good technology to discuss in the classroom. Assign the students
to research the topic and present the pros and cons of the issue.

13
Key Terms
Key Term Definition
active display area
Diagonal length of a monitor’s viewing area. Also know as
size.
active-matrix monitor
A type of flat-panel monitor where each pixel is
independently activated. (See also thin film transistor
(TFT) monitor)
aspect ratio
This is a ratio determined by the width of a monitor divided
by its height.
bar code
The vertical zebra-striped marks printed on product
containers.
bar code reader
Contains photoelectric cells that scan or read bar codes.
(See also bar code scanner)
bar code scanner
Contains photoelectric cells that scan or read bar codes.
(See also bar code reader)
cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitor
The most common type of monitor that are typically placed
directly on the system unit or on the desktop.
clarity The quality and sharpness of the displayed images.
cloud printer
Printers connected to the Internet that provide printing
services to others on the Internet.
combination key
A key, that when held down in combination with another
key, performs an action.
cordless mouse
A battery-powered device that typically uses radio waves or
infrared light waves to communicate with the system unit.
(See also wireless mouse)
digital camera
Images are recorded digitally on a disk or in the camera’s
memory rather than on film.
digital media player
A specialized device for storing, transferring, and playing
audio files. See also portable media player)
digital video camera
Record motion digitally on a disk or in the camera’s
memory.
digital whiteboard
Specialized devices with a large display connected to a
computer or projector (see also interactive whiteboard)
display screen
A computer device that presents visual images of text and
graphics. (See also monitor)
document scanner
Scanner that quickly scans multipage documents by
automatically feeding one page at a time through a scanning
surface.
dot-matrix printer
A type of printer that forms characters and images using a
series of small pins on a print head.
dot pitch
A function of a monitor that is the distance between each
pixel. (See also pixel pitch)
dots-per-inch (dpi)
The measurement of printer resolution, the more dots-per-
inch the better the quality of the image printed.
dual-scan monitor
Type of flat-panel monitor that create images by scanning
the entire screen. (See also passive-matrix monitor)

14
duplex printing
Printing feature that allows automatic printing on both sides
of a sheet of paper.
e-book
Dedicated, handheld, book-size devices that display text and
graphics (See also e-book reader)
e-book reader
Dedicated, handheld, book-sized devices that display text
and graphics. (See also e-book)
e-paper
A special type of screen for an e-book reader that requires
power only when changing pages, and not the entire time a
page is displayed. (See also e-paper)
electronic paper
A special type of screen for an e-book reader that requires
power only when charging pages, and not the entire time a
page is displayed. (See also e-paper)
ergonomic keyboard
A type of keyboard designed specifically to alleviate wrist
strain associated with the repetitive movements of typing.
fax machine
A device for sending and receiving images over telephone
lines.
flat-panel monitor
A type of monitor that is much thinner and requires less
power to operate than CRTs.
flatbed scanner
The image to be scanned is placed on a glass surface and the
scanner records the image from below.
Google Cloud Print A service that supports cloud printing.
grayscale
Most common black ink selection in which images are
displayed in many shades of gray.
handwriting recognition software
Translates handwritten notes into a form that the system
unit can process.
Hard copy Printer output is often called hard copy
headsets An audio-output device.
high-definition television
(HDTV)
A digitized television output that delivers a much clearer
and more detailed wide-screen picture than regular
television.
ink-jet printer
A type of printer that sprays ink at high speed onto the
surface of paper.
input Any data or instructions that are used by a computer.
input device
Hardware used to translate words, sounds, images, and
actions that people understand into a form that the system
unit can process.
interactive whiteboard
Specialized devices with a large display connected to a
computer or projector (see also digital whiteboard)
Internet telephone
Specialized input and output devices for receiving and
sending voice communication.
Internet telephony
A type of communications system that uses the Internet
rather than traditional communication lines to support voice
communication. (Se also IP telephony, Voice over IP)
IP telephony
A type of communications system that uses the Internet
rather than traditional communication lines to support voice
communication. (Se also Internet telephony, Voice over IP)
joystick Input device for computer games.

15
keyboard
Convert numbers, letters, and special characters that people
understand into electrical signals.
laser printer
A type of printer that uses a laser light beam to produce
images with excellent letter and graphics quality.
liquid crystal display (LCD)
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mountains. In the distance there are villages, the nearest fully visible
even to its most insignificant buildings, others showing only a few
white gleams through the openings of their elms, and others still
distinguishable by merely a spire.
There has been talk such as affianced couples indulge in; we must
mention this for the sake of truth, and we must omit it in mercy.
“Lovers,” declares a critic who has weight with us, “are habitually
insipid, at least to us married people.” It was a man who said that;
no woman, it is believed, could utter such a condemnation of her
own heart: no woman ever quite loses her interest in the drama of
love-making. But out of regard to such males as have drowned their
sentimentality in marriage we will, for the present, pass over the
words of tenderness and devotion, and only listen when Professor
Foster becomes philosophical.
“What if I should throw myself down here?” said Bessie Barron,
after a long look over the precipice, meanwhile holding fast to a
guardian arm.
“You would commit suicide,” was the reply of a man whom we
must admit to have been accurately informed concerning the nature
of actions like the one specified.
Slightly disappointed at not hearing the appeal, “O my darling,
don’t think of such a thing!” Bessie remained silent a moment,
wondering if she were silly or he cold-hearted. Did she catch a
glimmering of the fact that men do not crave small sensations as
women do, and that the man before her was a specially rational
being because he had been trained in the sublime logic of the laws
of nature? Doubtful: the two sexes are profoundly unlike in mental
action; they must study each other long before they can fully
understand each other.
“I suppose I should be dreadfully punished for it,” she went on,
her thoughts turning to the world beyond death, that world which
trembling faith sees, and which is, therefore, visible to woman.

“I am not sure,” boldly admitted the Professor, who had been
educated in Germany.
In order to learn something of the character of this young man,
we must permit him to jabber his nondescript ideas for a little, even
though we are thereby stumbled and wearied.
“Not sure?” queried Bessie. “How do you mean? Don’t you think
suicide sinful? Don’t you think sin will be punished?”
She spoke with eagerness, dreading to find her lover not
orthodox,—a woful stigma in Barham on lovers, and indeed on all
men whatever.
“Admitting thus much, I don’t know how far you would be a free
agent in the act,” lectured the philosopher. “I don’t know where free
agency begins or ends. Indeed, I am so puzzled by this question as
to doubt whether there is such a condition as free agency.”
“No such thing as free agency?” wondered Bessie. “Then what?”
“See here. Out of thirty-eight millions of Frenchmen a fixed
number commit suicide every year. Every year just so many
Frenchmen out of a million kill themselves. Does that look like free
agency, or does it look like some unknown influence, some general
rule of depression, some law of nature, which affects Frenchmen,
and which they cannot resist? The individual seems to be free, at
every moment of his life, to do as he chooses. But what leads him to
choose? Born instincts, conditions of health, surroundings,
circumstances. Do not the circumstances so govern his choice that
he cannot choose differently? Moreover, is he really an individual? Or
is he only a fraction of a great unity, the human race, and directed
by its current? We speak of a drop of water as if it were an
individuality; but it cannot swim against the stream to which it
belongs; it is not free. Is not the individual man in the same
condition? There are questions there which I cannot answer; and
until I can answer them I cannot answer your question.”
We have not repeated without cause these bold and crude
speculations. It is necessary to show that Foster was what was

called in Barham a free-thinker, in order to account for efforts which
were made to thwart his marriage with Bessie Barron, and for
prejudices which aided to work a stern drama into his life.
The girl listened and pondered. She tried to follow her lover over
the seas of thought upon which he walked; but the venture was
beyond her powers, and she returned to the pleasant firm land of a
subject nearer her heart.
“Are you thinking of me?” she asked in a low tone, and with an
appealing smile.
“No,” he smiled back. “I must own that I was not. But I ought to
have been. I do think of you a great deal.”
“More than I deserve?” she queried, still suspicious that she was
not sufficiently prized to satisfy her longings for affection.
He laughed outright. “No, not more than you deserve; not as
much as you deserve; you deserve a great deal. How many times
are you going to ask me these questions?”
“Every day. A hundred times a day. Shall you get tired of them?”
“Of course not. But what does it mean? Do you doubt me?”
“No. But I want to hear you say that you think of me, over and
over again. It gives me such pleasure to hear you say it! It is such a
great happiness that it seems as if it were my only happiness.”
Before Bessie had fallen in love with Foster, and especially before
her engagement to him, there had been a time when she had talked
more to the satisfaction of the male critic. But now her whole soul
was absorbed in the work of loving. She had no thought for any
other subject; none, at least, while with him. Her whole appearance
and demeanor shows how completely she is occupied by this master
passion of woman. A smile seems to exhale constantly from her
face; if it is not visible on her lips, nor, indeed, anywhere, still you
perceive it; if it is no more to be seen than the perfume of a flower,
still you are conscious of it. It is no figurative exaggeration to say
that there is within her soul an incessant music, like that of waltzes,

and of all sweet, tender, joyous melodies. If you will watch her
carefully, and if you have the delicate senses of sympathy, you also
will hear it.
Are we wrong in declaring that the old, old story of clinging hearts
is more fascinating from age to age, as human thoughts become
purer and human feelings more delicate? We believe that love, like
all other things earthly, is subject to the progresses of the law of
evolution, and grows with the centuries to be a more various and
exquisite source of happiness. This girl is more in love than her
grandmother, who made butter and otherwise wrought laboriously
with her own hands, had ever found it possible to be. An
organization refined by the manifold touch of high civilization, an
organization brought to the keenest sensitiveness by poetry and
fiction and the spiritualized social breath of our times, an
organization in which muscle is lacking and nerve overabundant, she
is capable of an affection which has the wings of imagination, which
can soar above the ordinary plane of belief, which is more than was
once human.
Consider for an instant what an elaboration of culture the passion
of love may have reached in this child. She can invest the man
whom she has accepted as monarch of her soul with the perfections
of the heroes of history and of fiction. She can prophesy for him a
future which a hundred years since was not realizable upon this
continent. Out of her own mind she can draw shining raiment of
success for him which shall be visible across oceans, and crowns of
fame which shall not be dimmed by centuries. She can love him for
superhuman loveliness which she has power to impute to him, and
for victories which she is magician enough to strew in anticipation
beneath his feet. It is not extravagance, it is even nothing but the
simplest and most obvious truth, to say that there have been periods
in the world’s history, without going back to the cycles of the
troglodyte and the lake-dweller, when such love would have been
beyond the capabilities of humanity.

It must be understood, by the way, that Bessie was not bred amid
the sparse, hard-worked, and scantily cultured population of
Barham, and that, until the death of her parents, two years before
the opening of this story, she had been a plant of the stimulating,
hot-bed life of a city. Into this bucolic land she had brought
susceptibilities which do not often exist there, and a craving for
excitements of sentiment which does not often find gratification
there. Consequently the first youth who in any wise resembled the
ideal of manhood which she had set up in her soul found her ready
to fall into his grasp, to believe in him as in a deity, and to look to
him for miracles of love and happiness.
Well, these two interesting idiots, as the unsympathizing observer
might call them, have turned their backs on the precipice and are
walking toward the girl’s home. They had not gone far before Bessie
uttered a speech which excited Harry’s profound amazement, and
which will probably astonish every young man who has not as yet
made his conquests. After looking at him long and steadfastly, she
said: “How is it possible that you can care for me? I don’t see what
you find in me to make me worthy of your admiration.”
How often such sentiments have been felt, and how often also
they have been spoken, by beings whose hearts have been bowed
by the humility of strong affection! Perhaps women are less likely to
give them speech than men; but it is only because they are more
trammelled by an education of reserve, and by inborn delicacy and
timidity; it is not because they feel them less. This girl, however, was
so frank in nature, and so earnest and eager in her feelings, that she
could not but give forth the aroma of loving meekness that was in
her soul.
“What do you mean?” asked Foster, in his innocent surprise. “See
nothing to admire in you!”
“O, you are so much wiser than I, and so much nobler!” she
replied. “It is just because you are good, because you have the best
heart that ever was, that you care for me. You found me lonely and
unhappy, and so you pitied me and took charge of me.”

“O no!” he began; but we will not repeat his protestations; we will
just say that he, too, was properly humble.
“Have you really been lonely and sad?” he went on, curious to
know every item of her life, every beat of her heart.
“Does that old house look like a paradise to you?” she asked,
pointing to the dwelling of Squire Lauson.
“It isn’t very old, and it doesn’t look very horrible,” he replied, a
little anxious as he thought of his future housekeeping. “Perhaps
ours will not be so fine a one.”
“I was not thinking of that,” declared Bessie. “Our house will be
charming, even if it has but one story, and that under ground. But
this one! You don’t see it with my eyes; you haven’t lived in it.”
“Is it haunted?” inquired Foster, of whom we must say that he did
not believe in ghosts, and, in fact, scorned them with all the scorn of
a philosopher.
“Yes, and by people who are not yet buried,—people who call
themselves alive.”
The subject was a delicate one probably, for Bessie said no more
concerning it, and Foster considerately refrained from further
questions. There was one thing on which this youth especially prided
himself, and that was on being a gentleman in every sense possible
to a republican. Because his father had been a judge, and his
grandfather and great-grandfather clergymen, he conceived that he
belonged to a patrician class, similar to that which Englishmen style
“the untitled nobility,” and that he was bound to exhibit as many
chivalrous virtues as if his veins throbbed with the blood of the Black
Prince. Although not combative, and not naturally reckless of pain
and death, he would have faced Heenan and Morrissey together in
fight, if convinced that his duty as a gentleman demanded it.
Similarly he felt himself obliged “to do the handsome thing” in
money matters; to accept, for instance, without haggling, such a
salary as was usual in his profession; to be as generous to waiters as
if he were a millionaire. Furthermore, he must be magnanimous to

all that great multitude who were his inferiors, and particularly must
he be fastidiously decorous and tender in his treatment of women.
All these things he did or refrained from doing, not only out of good
instincts towards others, but out of respect for himself.
On the whole, he was a worthy and even admirable specimen of
the genus young man. No doubt he was conceited; he often
offended people by his bumptiousness of opinion and hauteur of
manner; he rather depressed the human race by the severity with
which he classed this one and that one as “no gentleman,” because
of slight defects in etiquette; he considerably amused older and
wearier minds by the confidence with which he settled vexed
questions of several thousand years’ standing; but with all these
faults, he was a better and wiser and more agreeable fellow than
one often meets at his age; he was a youth whom man could
respect and woman adore. To noble souls it must be agreeable, I
think, to see him at the present moment, anxious to know precisely
what sorrows had clouded the life of his betrothed in the old house
before him, and yet refraining from questioning her on the alluring
subject, “because he was a gentleman.”
The house itself kept its secret admirably. It had not a signature of
character about it; it was as non-committal as an available candidate
for the Presidency; it exhibited the plain, unornamental, unpoetic
reserve of a Yankee Puritan. Whether it were a stage for comedy or
tragedy, whether it were a palace for happy souls or a prison for
afflicted ones, it gave not even a darkling hint.
A sufficiently spacious edifice, but low of stature and with a long
slope of back roof, it reminded one of a stocky and round-shouldered
old farmer, like those who daily trudged by it to and from the market
of Hampstead, hawing and geeing their fat cattle with lean, hard
voices. A front door, sheltered by a small portico, opened into a hall
which led straight through the building, with a parlor and bedroom
on one side, and a dining-room and kitchen on the other. In the rear
was a low wing serving as wash-house, lumber-room, and wood-
shed. The white clapboards and green blinds were neither freshly

painted nor rusty, but just sedately weather-worn. The grounds, the
long woodpiles, the barn and its adjuncts, were all in that state of
decent slovenliness which prevails amid the more rustic farming
population of New England. On the whole, the place looked like the
abode of one who had made a fair fortune by half a century or more
of laborious and economical though not enlightened agriculture.
“I must leave you now,” said Foster, when the two reached the
gate of the “front-yard”; “I must get back to my work in
Hampstead.”
“And you won’t come in for a minute?” pleaded Bessie.
“You know that I would be glad to come in and stay in for ever
and ever. It seems now as if life were made for nothing but talking
to you. But my fellow-men no doubt think differently. There are such
things as lectures, and I must prepare a few of them. I really have
pressing work to do.”
What he furthermore had in his mind was, “I am bound as a
gentleman to do it”; but he refrained from saying that: he was
conscious that he sometimes said it too much; little by little he was
learning that he was bumptious, and that he ought not to be.
“And you will come to-morrow?” still urged Bessie, grasping at the
next best thing to to-day.
“Yes, I shall walk out. This driving every day won’t answer, on a
professor’s salary,” he added, swelling his chest over this grand
confession of poverty. “Besides, I need the exercise.”
“How good of you to walk so far merely to see me!” exclaimed the
humble little beauty.
Until he came again she brooded over the joys of being his
betrothed, and over the future, the far greater joy of being his wife.
Was not this high hope in love, this confidence in the promises of
marriage, out of place in Bessie? She has daily before her, in the
mutual sayings and doings of her grandfather and his spouse, a
woful instance of the jarring way in which the chariot-wheels of

wedlock may run. Squire Tom Lauson does not get on angelically
with his second wife. It is reported that she finds existence with him
the greatest burden that she has ever yet borne, and that she
testifies to her disgust with it in a fashion which is at times
startlingly dramatic. If we arrive at the Lauson house on the day
following the dialogue which has been reported, we shall witness
one of her most effective exhibitions.
It is raining violently; an old-fashioned blue-light Puritan thunder-
storm is raging over the Barham hills; the blinding flashes are
instantaneously followed by the deafening peals; the air is full of
sublime terror and danger. But to Mrs. Squire Lauson the tempest is
so far from horrible that it is even welcome, friendly, and alluring,
compared with her daily showers of conjugal misery. She has just
finished one of those frequent contests with her husband, which her
sickly petulance perpetually forces her to seek, and which
nevertheless drive her frantic. In her wild, yet weak rage and misery,
death seems a desirable refuge. Out of the open front door she
rushes, out into the driving rain and blinding lightning, lifts her
hands passionately toward Heaven, and prays for a flash to strike
her dead.
After twice shrieking this horrible supplication, she dropped her
arms with a gesture of sullen despair, and stalked slowly, reeking
wet, into the house. In the hall, looking out upon this scene of
demoniacal possession, sat Bessie Lauson and her maiden aunt, Miss
Mercy Lauson, while behind them, coming from an inner room,
appeared the burly figure of the old Squire. As Mrs. Lauson passed
the two women, they drew a little aside with a sort of shrinking
which arose partly from a desire to avoid her dripping garments, and
partly from that awe with which most of us regard ungovernable
passion. The Squire, on the contrary, met his wife with a sarcastic
twinkle of his grim gray eyes, and a scoff which had the humor
discoverable in the contrast between total indifference and furious
emotion.

“Closed your camp-meeting early, Mrs. Lauson,” said the old man;
“can’t expect a streak of lightning for such a short service.”
A tormentor who wears a smile inflicts a double agony. Mrs.
Lauson wrung her hands, and broke out in a cry of rage and
anguish: “O Lord, let it strike me! O Lord, let it strike me!”
Squire Lauson took a chair, crossed his thick, muscular legs,
glanced at his wife, glanced at the levin-seamed sky, and remarked
with a chuckle, “I’m waiting to see this thing out.”
“Father, I say it’s perfectly awful,” remonstrated Miss Mercy
Lauson. “Mother, ain’t you ashamed of yourself?”
Miss Mercy was an old maid of the grave, sad, sickly New England
type. She pronounced her reproof in a high, thin, passionless
monotone, without a gesture or a flash of expression, without
glancing at the persons whom she addressed, looking straight before
her at the wall. She seemed to speak without emotion, and merely
from a stony sense of duty. It was as if a message had been
delivered by the mouth of an automaton.
Both the Squire and his wife made some response, but a
prolonged crash of thunder drowned the feeble blasphemy of their
voices, and the moving of their lips was like a mockery of life, as if
the lips of corpses had been stirred by galvanism. Then, as if
impatient of hearing both man and God, Mrs. Lauson clasped her
hands over her ears, and fled away to some inner room of the
shaking old house, seeking perhaps the little pity that there is for the
wretched in solitude. The Squire remained seated, his gray and
horny fingers drumming on the arms of the chair, and his faded lips
murmuring some inaudible conversation.
For the wretchedness of Mrs. Lauson there was partial cause in
the disposition and ways of her husband. Very odd was the old
Squire; violently combative could he be in case of provocation; and
to those who resisted what he called his rightful authority he was a
tyrant.

Having lost the wife whom he had ruled for so many years, and
having enjoyed the serene but lonely empire of widowhood for
eighteen months, he felt the need of some one for some purpose,—
perhaps to govern. Once resolved on a fresh spouse, he set about
searching for one in a clear-headed and business-like manner, as if it
had been a question of getting a family horse.
The woman whom he finally received into his flinty bosom was a
maiden of forty-five, who had known in her youth the uneasy joys of
many flirtations, and who had marched through various successes
(the triumphs of a small university town) to sit down at last in a life-
long disappointment. Regretting her past, dissatisfied with every
present, demanding improbabilities of the future, eager still to be
flattered and worshipped and obeyed, she was wofully unfitted for
marriage with an old man of plain habits and retired life, who was
quite as egoistic as herself and far more combative and
domineering. It was soon a horrible thing to remember the young
lovers who had gone long ago, but who, it seemed to her, still
adored her, and to compare them with this unsympathizing master,
who gave her no courtship nor tender reverence, and who spoke but
to demand submission.
“In a general way,” says a devout old lady of my acquaintance,
“Divine Providence blesses second marriages.”
With no experience of my own in this line, and with not a large
observation of the experience of others, I am nevertheless inclined
to admit that my friend has the right of it. Conceding the fact that
second marriages are usually happy, one naturally asks, Why is it? Is
it because a man knows better how to select a second wife? or
because he knows better how to treat her? Well disposed toward
both these suppositions, I attach the most importance to the latter.
No doubt Benedict chooses more thoughtfully when he chooses a
second time; no doubt he is governed more by judgment than in his
first courtship, and less by blind impulse; no doubt he has learned
some love-making wisdom from experience. A woman who will be
patient with him, a woman who will care well for his household

affairs and for his children, a woman who will run steadily rather
than showily in the domestic harness,—that is what he usually wants
when he goes sparking at forty or fifty.
But this is not all and not even the half of the explanation. He has
acquired a knowledge of what woman is, and a knowledge of what
may fairly be required of her. He has learned to put himself in her
place; to grant her the sympathy which her sensitive heart needs; to
estimate the sufferings which arise from her variable health; in
short, he has learned to be thoughtful and patient and merciful.
Moreover, he is apt to select some one who, like himself, has learned
command of temper and moderation of expectation from the lessons
of life. As he knows that a glorified wife is impossible here below, so
she makes no strenuous demand for an angel husband.
But Squire Thomas Lauson had married an old maid who had not
yet given up the struggle to be a girl, and who, in consequence of a
long and silly bellehood, could not put up with any form of existence
which was not a continual courtship. Furthermore, he himself was
not a persimmon; he had not gathered sweetness from the years
which frosted his brow. An interestingly obdurate block of the
Puritan granite of New England, he was almost as self-opinionated,
domineering, pugnacious, and sarcastic as he had been at fifteen.
He still had overmuch of the unripe spirit which plagues little boys,
scoffs at girls, stones frogs, drowns kittens, and mutters domestic
defiances. If Mrs. Lauson was skittish and fractious, he was her full
match as a wife-breaker.
In short, the Squire had not chosen wisely; he was not fitted to
win a woman’s heart by sympathy and justice; and thus Providence
had not blessed his second marriage.
We must return now to Miss Mercy Lauson and her niece Bessie.
They are alone once more, for Squire Lauson has finished his
sarcastic mutterings, and has stumped away to some other dungeon
of the unhappy old house.

“You see, Bessie!” said Miss Mercy, after a pinching of her thin lips
which was like the biting of forceps,—“you see how married people
can live with each other. Bickerings an’ strife! bickerings an’ strife!
But for all that you mean to marry Henry Foster.”
We must warn the reader not to expect vastness of thought or
eloquence of speech from Miss Mercy. Her narrow-shouldered,
hollow-chested soul could not grasp ideas of much moment, nor
handle such as she was able to grasp with any vigor or grace.
“I should like to know,” returned Bessie with spirit, “if I am not
likely to have my share of bickerings and strife, if I stay here and
don’t get married.”
“That depends upon how far you control your temper, Elizabeth.”
“And so it does in marriage, I suppose.”
Miss Mercy found herself involved in an argument, when she had
simply intended to play the part of a preacher in his pulpit, warning
and reproving without being answered. She accepted the challenge
in a tone of iced pugnacity, which indicated in part a certain
imperfect habit of self-control, and in part the unrestrainable
peevishness of a chronic invalid.
“I don’t say folks will necessarily be unhappy in merridge,” she
went on. “Merridge is a Divine ord’nance, an’ I’m obleeged to
respect it as such. I do, I suppose, respect it more ’n some who’ve
entered into it. But merridge, to obtain the Divine blessing, must not
be a yoking with unbelievers. There’s the trouble with father’s wife;
she ain’t a professor. There, too, ’s the trouble with Henry Foster;
he’s not one of those who’ve chosen the better part. I want you to
think it all over in soberness of sperrit, Elizabeth.”
“It is the only thing you know against him,” replied the girl,
flushing with the anger of outraged affection.
“No, it ain’t. He’s brung home strange ways from abroad. He
smokes an’ drinks beer an’ plays cards; an’ his form seldom darkens
the threshold of the sanctuary. Elizabeth, I must be plain with you

on this vital subject. I’m going to be as plain with you as your own
conscience ought to be. I see it’s no use talking to you ’bout duty an’
the life to come. I must—there’s no sort of doubt about it—I must
bring the things of this world to bear on you. You know I’ve made
my will: I’ve left every cent of my property to you,—twenty thousand
dollars! Well, if you enter into merridge with that young man, I shall
alter it. I ain’t going to have my money,—the money that my poor
God-fearing aunt left me,—I ain’t going to have it fooled away on
card-players an’ scorners. Now there it is, Elizabeth. There’s what my
duty tells me to do, an’ what I shall do. Ponder it well an’ take your
choice.”
“I don’t care,” burst forth Bessie, springing to her feet. “I shall tell
him, and if it makes no difference to him, it will make none to me.”
Here a creak in the floor caught her ear, and turning quickly she
discovered Henry Foster. Entering the house by a side door, and
coming through a short lateral passage to the front hall, he had
reached it in time to hear the close of the conversation and catch its
entire drift. You could see in his face that he had heard thus much,
for healthy, generous, kindly, and cheerful as the face usually was, it
wore now a confused and pained expression.
“I beg pardon for disturbing you,” he said. “I was pelted into the
house to get out of the shower, and I took the shortest cut.”
Bessie’s Oriental visage flushed to a splendid crimson, and a
whiter ashiness stole into the sallow cheek of Aunt Mercy. The girl,
quick and adroit as most women are in leaping out of
embarrassments, rushed into a strain of light conversation. How wet
Professor Foster was, and wouldn’t he go and dry himself? What a
storm it had been, and what wonderful, dreadful thunder and
lightning; and how glad she was that he had come, for it seemed as
if he were some protection.
“There’s only One who can protect us,” murmured Aunt Mercy,
“either in such seasons or any others.”

“His natural laws are our proper recourse,” respectfully replied
Foster, who was religious too, in his scientific fashion.
Bessie cringed with alarm; here was an insinuated attack on her
aunt’s favorite dogma of special providences; the subject must be
pitched overboard at once.
“What is the news in Hampstead?” she asked. “Has the town gone
to sleep, as Barham has? You ought to wake us up with something
amusing.”
“Jennie Brown is engaged,” said Foster. “Isn’t that satisfactory?”
“O dear! how many times does that make?” laughed Bessie. “Is it
a student again?”
“Yes, it is a student.”
“You ought to make it a college offence for students to engage
themselves,” continued Bessie. “You know that they can hardly ever
marry, and generally break the girls’ hearts.”
“Have they broken Jennie Brown’s? She doesn’t believe it, nor her
present young man either. I’ve no doubt he thinks her as good as
new.”
“I dare say. But such things hurt girls in general, and you
professors ought to see to it, and I want to know why you don’t. But
is that all the news? That’s such a small matter! such an old sort of
thing! If I had come from Hampstead, I would have brought more
than that.”
So Bessie rattled on, partly because she loved to talk to this
admirable Professor, but mainly to put off the crisis which she saw
was coming.
But it was vain to hope for clemency, or even for much delay, from
Aunt Mercy. Grim, unhappy, peevish as many invalids are, and
impelled by a remorseless conscience, she was not to be diverted
from finishing with Foster the horrid bone which she had
commenced to pick with Bessie. You could see in her face what kind

of thoughts and purposes were in her heart. She was used to
quarrelling; or, to speak more strictly, she was used to entertaining
hard feelings towards others; but she had never learned to express
her bitter sentiments frankly. Unable to destroy them, she had felt
herself bound in general not to utter them, and this non-utterance
had grown to be one of her despotic and distressing “duties.”
Nothing could break through her shyness, her reserve, her habit of
silence, but an emotion which amounted to passion; and such an
emotion she was not only unable to conceal, but she was also
unable to exhibit it either nobly or gracefully: it shone all through
her, and it made her seem spiteful.
As she was about to speak, however, a glance at Bessie’s anxious
face checked her. After her painful, severe fashion, she really loved
the girl, and she did not want to load her with any more sorrow than
was strictly necessary. Moreover, the surely worthy thought occurred
to her that Heaven might favor one last effort to convert this wrong-
minded young man into one who could be safely intrusted with the
welfare of her niece and the management of her money. Hailing the
suggestion, in accordance with her usual exaltation of faith, as an
indication from the sublimest of all authority, she entered upon her
task with such power as nature had given her and such sweetness
as a shattered nervous system had left her.
“Mr. Foster, there’s one thing I greatly desire to see,” she began in
a hurried, tremulous tone. “I want you to come out from among the
indifferent, an’ join yourself to us. Why don’t you do it? Why don’t
you become a professor?”
Foster was even more surprised and dismayed than most men are
when thus addressed. Here was an appeal such as all of us must
listen to with respect, not only because it represents the opinions of
a vast and justly revered portion of civilized humanity, but because it
concerns the highest mysteries and possibilities of which humanity is
cognizant. As one who valued himself on being both a philosopher
and a gentleman, he would have felt bound to treat any one
courteously who thus approached him. But there was more; this

appeal evidently alluded to his intentions of marriage; it was
connected with the threat of disinheritance which he had overheard
on entering the house. If he would promise to “join the church,” if
he would even only appear to take the step into favorable
consideration, he could remove the objections of this earnest woman
to his betrothal, and secure her property to his future wife. But
Foster could not do what policy demanded; he had his “honest
doubts,” and he could not remove them by an exercise of will;
moreover, he was too self-respectful and honorable to be a
hypocrite. After pondering Aunt Mercy’s question for a moment, he
answered with a dignity of soul which was not appreciated,—
“I should have no objection to what you propose, if it would not
be misunderstood. If it would only mean that I believe in God, and
that I worship his power and goodness, I would oblige you. But it
would be received as meaning more,—as meaning that I accept
doctrines which I am still examining,—as meaning that I take upon
myself obligations which I do not yet hold binding.”
“Don’t you believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?”
demanded Miss Mercy, striking home with telling directness.
“I believe in a Deity who views his whole universe with equal love.
I believe in a Deity greater than I always hear preached.”
Miss Mercy was puzzled; for while this confession of faith did not
quite tally with what she was accustomed to receive from pulpits,
there was about it a largeness of religious perception which slightly
excited her awe. Nevertheless, it showed a dangerous vagueness,
and she decided to demand something more explicit.
“What are your opinions on the inspiration of the Scriptures?” she
asked.
He had been reading Colenso’s work on Genesis; and, so far as he
could judge the Bishop’s premises, he agreed with his conclusions.
At the same time he was aware that such an exegesis would seem
simple heresy to Miss Mercy, and that whoever held it would be
condemned by her as a heathen and an infidel. After a moment of

hesitation, he responded bravely and honestly, though with a
placating smile.
“Miss Lauson, there are some subjects, indeed there are many
subjects, on which I have no fixed opinions. I used to have opinions
on almost everything; but I found them very troublesome, I had to
change them so often! I have decided not to declare any more
positive opinions, but only to entertain suppositions to the effect that
this or that may be the case; meantime holding myself ready to
change my hypotheses on further evidence.”
Although he seemed to her guilty of shuffling away from her
question, yet she, in the main, comprehended his reply distinctly
enough. He did not believe in plenary inspiration; that was clear, and
so also was her duty clear; she must not let him have her niece nor
her money.
Now there was a something in her face like the forming of
columns for an assault, or rather like the irrational, ungovernable
gathering of clouds for a storm. Her staid, melancholy soul—a soul
which usually lay in chains and solitary—climbed writhing to her lips
and eyes, and made angry gestures before it spoke. Bessie stared at
her in alarm; she tried, in a spirit of youthful energy, to look her
down; but the struggle of prevention was useless; the hostile words
came.
“Mr. Foster, I can’t willingly give my niece to such an one as you,”
she said in a tremulous but desperate monotone. “I s’pose, though,
it’s no use forbidding you to go with her. I s’pose you wouldn’t mind
that. But I expect you will care for one thing,—for her good. My will
is made now in her favor. But if she marries you I shall change it. I
sha’n’t leave her a cent.”
Here her sickly strength broke down; such plain utterance of
feeling and purpose was too much for her nerves; she burst into
honest, bitter tears, and, rushing to her room, locked herself up; no
doubt, too, she prayed there long, and read solemnly in the
Scriptures.

What was the result of this conscientious but no doubt unwise
remonstrance? After a shock of disagreeable surprise, the two lovers
did what all true lovers would have done; they entered into a solemn
engagement that no considerations of fortune should prevent their
marriage. They shut their eyes on the future, braved all the adverse
chances of life, and almost prayed for trials in order that each might
show the other greater devotion. The feeling was natural and
ungovernable, and I claim also that it was beautiful and noble.
“Do you know all?” asked Bessie. “Grandfather has never
proposed to leave me anything, he hated my father so! It was
always understood that Aunt Mercy was to take care of me.”
“I want nothing with you,” said Foster. “I will slave myself to death
for you. I will rejoice to do it.”
“O, I knew it would be so!” replied the girl, almost faint with joy
and love. “I knew you would be true to me. I knew how grand you
were.”
When they looked out upon the earth, after this scene, during
which they had been conscious of nothing but each other, the storm
had fled beyond verdant hills, and a rainbow spanned all the visible
landscape, seeming to them indeed a bow of promise.
“O, we can surely be happy in such a world as this!” said Bessie,
her face colored and illuminated by youth, hope, and love.
“We will find a cloud castle somewhere,” responded the young
man, pointing to the western sky, piled with purple and crimson.
Bessie was about to accompany him to the gate on his departure,
as was her simple and affectionate custom, when a voice called her
up stairs.
“O dear!” she exclaimed, pettishly. “It seems as if I couldn’t have a
moment’s peace. Good by, my darling.”
During the close of that day, at the hour which in Barham was
known as “early candle-lighting,” the Lauson tragedy began to take
form. The mysterious shadow which vaguely announced its on-

coming was the disappearance from the family ken of that
lighthouse of regularity, that fast-rooted monument of strict habit,
Aunt Mercy. The kerosene lamp which had so long beamed upon her
darnings and mendings, or upon her more æsthetic labors in behalf
of the Barham sewing society, or upon the open yellow pages of her
Scott’s Commentary and Baxter’s Saints’ Rest, now flared
distractedly about the sitting-room, as if in amazement at her
absence. Nowhere was seen her tall, thin, hard form, the truthful
outward expression of her lean and sickly soul; nowhere was heard
the afflicted squeak of her broad calfskin shoes, symbolical of the
worryings of her fretful conscience. The doors which she habitually
shut to keep out the night-draughts remained free to swing, and, if
they could find an aiding hand or breeze, to bang, in celebration of
their independence. The dog might wag his tail in wonder through
the parlor, and the cat might profane the sofa with his stretchings
and slumbers.
At first the absence of Aunt Mercy merely excited such pleasant
considerations as these. The fact was accepted as a relief from
burdens; it tended towards liberty and jocoseness of spirit. The
honest and well-meaning and devout woman had been the censor of
the family, and, next after the iron-headed Squire, its dictator. Bessie
might dance alone about the sober rooms, and play operatic airs and
waltzes upon her much-neglected piano, without being called upon
to assume sackcloth and ashes for her levity. The cheerful life which
seemed to enter the house because Aunt Mercy had left it was a
severe commentary on the sombre and unlovely character which her
diseased sense of duty had driven her to give to her unquestionably
sincere religious sentiment. It hinted that if she should be taken
altogether away from the family, her loss would awaken little
mourning, and would soon be forgotten.
Presently, however, this persistent absence of one whose very
nature it was to be present excited surprise, and eventually a
mysterious uneasiness. Search was made about the house; no one
was discovered up stairs but Mrs. Lauson, brooding alone; then a
neighbor or two was visited by Bessie; still no Aunt Mercy. The

solemn truth was, although no sanguinary sign as yet revealed it,
that the Lauson tragedy had an hour since been consummated.
The search for the missing Aunt Mercy continued until it aroused
the interest and temper of Squire Lauson. Determined to find his
daughter once that he had set about it, and petulant at the failure of
one line of investigation after another, the hard old gentleman
stumped noisily about the house, his thick shoes squeaking down
the passages like two bands of music, and his peeled hickory cane
punching open doors and upsetting furniture. When he returned to
the sitting-room from one of these boisterous expeditions, he found
his wife sitting in the light of the kerosene lamp, and sewing with an
impatient, an almost spiteful rapidity, as was her custom when her
nerves were unbearably irritated.
“Where’s Mercy?” he trumpeted. “Where is the old gal? Has
anybody eloped with her? I saw Deacon Jones about this afternoon.”
This jest was meant to amuse and perhaps to conciliate Mrs.
Lauson, for whom he sometimes seemed to have a rough pity, as
hard to bear as downright hostility. He had now and then a way of
joking with her and forcing her to smile by looking her steadily in the
eye. But this time his moral despotism failed; she answered his gaze
with a defiant glare, and remained sullen; after another moment she
rushed out of the room, as if craving relief from his domineering
presence.
Apparently the Squire would have called her back, had not his
attention been diverted by the entry of his granddaughter.
“I say, Bessie, have you looked in the garden?” he demanded.
“Why the Devil haven’t you? Don’t you know Mercy’s hole where she
meditates? Go there and hunt for her.”
As the girl disappeared he turned to the door through which his
wife had fled, as if he still had a savage mind to roar for her
reappearance. But after pondering a moment, and deciding that he
was more comfortable in solitude, he sat slowly down in his usual
elbow-chair, and broke out in a growling soliloquy:—

“There’s no comfort like making one’s self miserable. It’s a ——
sight better than making the best of it. We’re all having a devilish
fine time. We’re as happy as bugs in a rug. Hey diddle diddle, the
cat’s in the fiddle—”
The continuity of his rough-laid stone-wall sarcasm was
interrupted by Bessie, who rushed into the sitting-room with a low
shriek and a pallid face.
“What’s the matter now?” he demanded. “Has the cow jumped
over the moon?”
“O grandfather!” she gasped, “I’ve found Aunt Mercy. I’m afraid
she’s dead.”
“Hey!” exclaimed the Squire, starting up eagerly as he
remembered that Aunt Mercy was his own child. “You don’t say so!
Where is she?”
Bessie turned and reeled out of the house; the old man thumped
after her on his cane. At the bottom of the garden was a small,
neglected arbor, thickly overgrown with grape-vines in unpruned
leaf, whither Aunt Mercy was accustomed to repair in her seasons of
unusual perplexity or gloom, there to seek guidance or relief in
meditation and prayer. In this arbor they found her, seated
crouchingly on a bench near the doorway, her arms stretched over a
little table in front of her, and her head lying between them with the
face turned from the gazers. The moon glared in a ghastly way upon
her ominously white hands, and disclosed a dark yet gleaming stain,
seemingly a drying pool, which spread out from beneath her
forehead.
“Good Lord!” groaned Squire Lauson. “Mercy! I say, Mercy!”
He seized her hand, but he had scarcely touched it ere he dropped
it, for it was the icy, repulsive, alarming hand of a corpse. We must
compress our description of this scene of horrible discovery. Miss
Mercy Lauson was dead, the victim of a brutal assassination, her
right temple opened by a gash two inches deep, her blood already
clotted in pools or dried upon her face and fingers. It must have

been an hour, or perhaps two hours, since the blow had been dealt.
At her feet was the fatal weapon,—an old hatchet which had long
lain about the garden, and which offered no suggestion as to who
was the murderer.
When it first became clear to Squire Lauson that his daughter was
dead, and had been murdered, he uttered a sound between a gasp
and a sob; but almost immediately afterward he spoke in his
habitually vigorous and rasping voice, and his words showed that he
had not lost his iron self-possession.
“Bessie, run into the house,” he said. “Call the hired men, and
bring a lantern with you.”
When she returned he took the lantern, threw the gleam of it over
his dead daughter’s face, groaned, shook his head, and then, leaning
on his cane, commenced examining the earth, evidently in search of
footmarks.
“There’s your print, Bessie,” he mumbled. “And there’s my print.
But whose print’s that? That’s the man. That’s a long slim foot, with
nails across the ball. That’s the man. Don’t disturb those tracks. I’ll
set the lantern down there. Don’t you disturb ’em.”
There were several of these strange tracks; the clayey soil of the
walk, slightly tempered with sand, had preserved them with fatal
distinctness; it showed them advancing to the arbor and halting
close by the murdered woman. As Bessie stared at them, it seemed
to her that they were fearfully familiar, though where she had seen
them before she could not say.
“Keep away from those tracks,” repeated Squire Lauson as the two
laborers who lived with him came down the garden. “Now, then,
what are you staring at? She’s dead. Take her up—O, for God’s sake,
be gentle about it!—take her up, I tell you. There! Now, carry her
along.”
As the men moved on with the body he turned to Bessie and said:
“Leave the lantern just there. And don’t you touch those tracks. Go
on into the house.”

With his own hands he aided to lay out his daughter on a table,
and drew her cap from her temples so as to expose the bloody gash
to view. There was a little natural agony in the tremulousness of his
stubbly and grizzly chin; but in the glitter of his gray eyes there was
an expression which was not so much sorrow as revenge.
“That’s a pretty job,” he said at last, glaring at the mangled gray
head. “I should like to l’arn who did it.”
It was not known till the day following how he passed the next
half-hour. It seems that, some little time previous, this man of over
ninety years had conceived the idea of repairing with his own hands
the cracked wall of his parlor, and had for that purpose bought a
quantity of plaster of Paris and commenced a series of patient
experiments in mixing and applying it. Furnished with a basin of his
prepared material, he stalked out to the arbor and busied himself
with taking a mould of the strange footstep to which he had called
Bessie’s attention, succeeding in his labor so well as to be able to
show next day an exact counterpart of the sole which had made the
track.
Shortly after he had left the house, and glancing cautiously about
as if to make sure that he had indeed left it, his wife entered the
room where lay the dead body. She came slowly up to the table, and
looked at the ghastly face for some moments in silence, with
precisely that staid, slightly shuddering air which one often sees at
funerals, and without any sign of the excitement which one naturally
expects in the witnesses of a mortal tragedy. In any ordinary person,
in any one who was not, like her, denaturalized by the egotism of
shattered nerves, such mere wonder and repugnance would have
appeared incomprehensively brutal. But Mrs. Lauson had a character
of her own; she could be different from others without exciting
prolonged or specially severe comment; people said to themselves,
“Just like her,” and made no further criticism, and almost certainly no
remonstrance. Bessie herself, the moment she had exclaimed, “O
grandmother! what shall we do?” felt how absurd it was to address
such an appeal to such a person.

Mrs. Lauson replied by a glance which expressed weakness,
alarm, and aversion, and which demanded, as plainly as words could
say it, “How can you ask me?” Then without uttering a syllable,
without attempting to render any service or funereal courtesy,
bearing herself like one who had been mysteriously absolved from
the duties of sympathy and decorum, she turned her back on the
body of her step-daughter with a start of disgust, and walked hastily
from the room.
Of course there was a gathering of the neighbors, a hasty and
useless search after the murderer, a medical examination of the
victim, and a legal inquest at the earliest practicable moment, the
verdict being “death by the hand of some person unknown.” Even
the funeral passed, with its mighty crowd and its solemn excitement;
and still public suspicion had not dared to single out any one as the
criminal. It seemed for a day or two as if the family life might shortly
settle into its old tenor, the same narrow routine of quiet discontent
or irrational bickerings, with no change but the loss of such
inflammation as formerly arose from Aunt Mercy’s well-meant, but
irritating sense of duty. The Squire, however, was permanently and
greatly changed: not that he had lost the spirit of petty dictation
which led him to interfere in every household act, even to the boiling
of the pot, but he had acquired a new object in life, and one which
seemed to restore all his youthful energy; he was more restlessly
and distressingly vital than he had been for years. No Indian was
ever more intent on avenging a debt of blood than was he on
hunting down the murderer of his daughter. This terrible old man
has a strong attraction for us: we feel that we have not thus far
done him justice: he imperiously demands further description.
Squire Lauson was at this time ninety-three years of age. The fact
appeared incredible, because he had preserved, almost unimpaired,
not only his moral energy and intellectual faculties, but also his
physical senses, and even to an extraordinary degree his muscular
strength. His long and carelessly worn hair was not white, but
merely gray; and his only baldness was a shining hand’s-breadth,
prolonging the height of his forehead. His face was deeply wrinkled,

but more apparently with thought and passion than from decay, for
the flesh was still well under control of the muscles, and the
expression was so vigorous that one was tempted to call it robust.
There was nothing of that insipid and almost babyish tranquillity
which is commonly observable in the countenances of the extremely
aged. The cheekbones were heavy, though the healthy fulness of the
cheeks prevented them from being pointed; the jaws, not yet
attenuated by the loss of many teeth, were unusually prominent and
muscular; the heavy Roman nose still stood high above the
projecting chin. In general, it was a long, large face, grimly and
ruggedly massive, of a uniform grayish color, and reminding you of a
visage carved in granite.
In figure the Squire was of medium height, with a deep chest and
heavy limbs. He did not stand quite upright, but the stoop was in his
shoulders and not in his loins, and arose from a slouching habit of
carrying himself much more than from weakness. He walked with a
cane, but his step, though rather short, was strong and rapid, and
he could get over the ground at the rate of three miles an hour. At
times he seemed a little deaf, but it was mainly from absorption of
mind and inattention, and he could hear perfectly when he was
interested. The great gray eyes under his bushy, pepper-and-salt
eyebrows were still so sound that he only used spectacles in reading.
As for voice, there was hardly such another in the neighborhood; it
was a strong, rasping, dictatorial caw, like the utterance of a gigantic
crow; it might have served the needs of a sea-captain in a tempest.
A jocose neighbor related that he had in a dream descended into
hell, and that in trying to find his way out he had lost his reckoning,
until, hearing a tremendous volley of oaths on the surface of the
earth over his head, he knew that he was under the hills of Barham,
and that Squire Lauson was swearing at his oxen.
Squire Lauson was immense; you might travel over him for a week
without discovering half his wonders; he was a continent, and he
must remain for the most part an unknown continent. Bringing to a
close our explorations into his character and past life, we will follow
him up simply as one of the personages of this tragedy. He was at

the present time very active, but also to a certain extent
inexplicable. It was known that he had interviews with various
officials of justice, that he furnished them with his plaster cast of the
strange footprint which had been found in the garden, and that he
earnestly impressed upon them the value of this object for the
purpose of tracking out the murderer. But he had other lines of
investigation in his steady old hands, as was discoverable later.
His manner towards his granddaughter and his wife changed
noticeably. Instead of treating the first with neglect, and the second
with persistent hostility or derision, he became assiduously attentive
to them, addressed them frequently in conversation, and sought to
win their confidence. With Bessie this task was easy, for she was one
of those natural, unspoiled women, who long for sympathy, and she
inclined toward her grandfather the moment she saw any kindness
in his eyes. They had long talks about the murdered relative, about
every event or suspicion which seemed to relate to her death, about
the property which she had left to Bessie, and about the girl’s
prospects in life.
Not so with Mrs. Lauson. Even the horror which had entered the
family life could not open the hard crust which disease and
disappointment had formed over her nature, and she met the old
man’s attempts to make her communicative with her usual sulky or
pettish reticence. There never was such an unreasonable creature as
this wretched wife, who, while she remained unmarried, had striven
so hard to be agreeable to the other sex. It was not with her
husband alone that she fought, but with every one, whether man or
woman, who came near her. Whoever entered the house, whether it
were some gossiping neighbor or the clergyman or the doctor, she
flew out of it on discovering their approach, and wandered alone
about the fields until they departed. This absence she would perhaps
employ in eating green fruit, hoping, as she said, to make herself
sick and die, or, at least, to make herself sick enough to plague her
husband. At meals she generally sat in glum silence, although once
or twice she burst out in violent tirades, scoffing at the Squire’s
management of the place, defying him to strike her, etc.

Her appearance at this time was miserable and little less than
disgusting. Her skin was thick and yellow; her eyes were bloodshot
and watery; her nose was reddened with frequent crying; her form
was of an almost skeleton thinness; her manner was full of strange
starts and gaspings. It was curious to note the contrast between her
perfect wretchedness of aspect and the unfeeling coolness with
which the Squire watched and studied her.
In this woful way was the Lauson family getting on when the
country around was electrified by an event which almost threw the
murder itself into the shade. Henry Foster, the accepted lover of
Bessie Barron, a professor in the Scientific College of Hampstead,
was suddenly arrested as the assassin of Miss Mercy Lauson.
“What does this mean!” was his perfectly natural exclamation,
when seized by the officers of justice; but it was uttered with a
sudden pallor which awakened in the bystanders a strong suspicion
of his guilt. No definite answer was made to his question until he
was closeted with the lawyer whom he immediately retained in his
defence.
“I should like to get at the whole of your case, Mr. Foster,” said the
legal gentleman. “I must beg you, for your own sake, to be entirely
frank with me.”
“I assure you that I know nothing about the murder,” was the firm
reply. “I don’t so much as understand why I should be suspected of
the horrible business.”
The lawyer, Mr. Adams Patterson, after studying Foster in a furtive
way, as if doubtful whether there had been perfect honesty in his
assertion of innocence, went on to state what he supposed would be
the case of the prosecution.
“The evidence against you,” he said, “so far at least as I can now
discover, will all be circumstantial. They will endeavor to prove your
presence at the scene of the tragedy by your tracks. Footmarks, said
to correspond to yours, were found passing the door of the arbor,
returning to it and going away from it.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Foster. “I remember,—I did pass there. I will tell
you how. It was in the afternoon. I was in the house during a
thunder-storm which happened that day, and left it shortly after the
shower ended. I went out through the garden because that was the
nearest way to the rivulet at the bottom of the hill, and I wished to
make some examinations into the structure of the water-bed. A part
of the garden walk is gravelled, and on that I suppose my tracks did
not show. But near the arbor the gravel ceases, and there I
remember stepping into the damp mould. I did pass the arbor, and I
did return to it. I returned to it because it had been a heavenly place
to me. It was there that I proposed to Miss Barron, and that she
accepted me. The moment that I had passed it I reproached myself
for doing so. I went back, looked at the little spot for a moment, and
left a kiss on the table. It was on that table that her hand had rested
when I first dared to take it in mine.”
His voice broke for an instant with an emotion which every one
who has ever loved can at least partially understand.
“Good Heavens! to think that such an impulse should entangle me
in such a charge!” he added, when he could speak again.
“Well,” he resumed, after a long sigh, “I left the arbor,—my heart
as innocent and happy as any heart in the world,—I climbed over
the fence and went down the hill. That is the last time that I was in
those grounds that day. That is the whole truth, so help me God!”
The lawyer seemed touched. Even then, however, he was saying
to himself, “They always keep back something, if not everything.”
After meditating for a few seconds, he resumed his interrogatory.
“Did any one see you? did Miss Barron see you, as you passed
through the garden?”
“I think not. Some one called her just as I left her, and she went, I
believe, up stairs.”
“Did you see the person who called? Did you see any one?”

“No one. But the voice was a woman’s voice. I took it to be that of
a servant.”
Mr. Patterson fell into a thoughtful silence, his arms resting on the
elbows of his chair, and his anxious eyes wandering over the floor.
“But what motive?” broke out Foster, addressing the lawyer as if
he were an accuser and an enemy,—“what sufficient motive had I
for such a hideous crime?”
“Ah! that is just it. The motive! They will make a great deal of
that. Why, you must be able to guess what is alleged. Miss Lauson
had made a will in her niece’s favor, but had threatened to disinherit
her if she married you. This fact,—as has been made known by an
incautious admission of Miss Bessie Barron,—this fact you were
aware of. The death came just in time to prevent a change in the
will. Don’t you see the obvious inference of the prosecution?”
“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Foster, springing up and pacing his
cell. “I murder a woman,—murder my wife’s aunt,—for money,—for
twenty thousand dollars! Am I held so low as that? Why, it is a sum
that any clever man can earn in this country in a few years. We
could have done without it. I would not have asked for it, much less
murdered for it. Tell me, Mr. Patterson, do you suppose me capable
of such degrading as well as such horrible guilt?”
“Mr. Foster,” replied the lawyer, with impressive deliberation, “I
shall go into this case with a confidence that you are absolutely
innocent.”
“Thank you,” murmured the young man, grasping Patterson’s hand
violently, and then turning away to wipe a tear, which had been too
quick for him.
“Excuse my weakness,” he said, presently. “But I don’t believe any
worthy man is strong enough to bear the insult that the world has
put upon me, without showing his suffering.”
Certainly, Foster’s bearing and the sentiments which he expressed
had the nobility and pathos of injured innocence. Were it not that

innocence can be counterfeited, as also that a fine demeanor and
touching utterance are not points in law, no alarming doubt would
seem to overshadow the result of the trial. And yet, strange as it
must seem to those whom my narrative may have impressed in
favor of Foster, the sedate, Puritanic population of Barham and its
vicinity inclined more and more toward the presumption of his guilt.
For this there were two reasons. In the first place, who but he had
any cause of spite against Mercy Lauson, or could hope to draw any
profit from her death? There had been no robbery; there was not a
sign that the victim’s clothing had been searched; the murder had
clearly not been the work of a burglar or a thief. But Foster, if he
indeed assassinated this woman, had thereby removed an obstacle
to his marriage, and had secured to his future wife a considerable
fortune.
In the second place, Foster was such a man as the narrowly
scrupulous and orthodox world of Barham would naturally regard
with suspicion. Graduate of a German university, he had brought
back to America, not only a superb scientific education, but also
what passed, in the region where he had settled, for a laxity of
morals. Professor as he was in the austere college of Hampstead,
and expected, therefore, to set a luminously correct example in both
theoretical and practical ethics, he held theological opinions which
were too modern to be considered sound, and he even neglected
church to an extent which his position rendered scandalous. In spite
of the strict prohibitory law of Massachusetts, he made use of lager-
beer and other still stronger fluids; and, although he was never
known to drink to excess, the mere fact of breaking the statute was
a sufficient offence to rouse prejudice. It was also reported of him,
to the honest horror of many serious minds, that he had been
detected in geologizing on Sunday, and that he was fond of whist.
How apt we are to infer that a man who violates our code of
morals will also violate his own code! Of course this Germanized
American could not believe that murder was right; but then he

played cards and drank beer, which we of Barham knew to be
wrong; and if he would do one wrong thing, why not another?
Meantime how was it with Bessie? How is it always with women
when those whom they love are charged with unworthiness? Do
they exhibit the “judicial mind”? Do they cautiously weigh the
evidence and decide according to it? The girl did not entertain the
faintest supposition that her lover could be guilty; she was no more
capable of blackening his character than she was capable of taking
his life. She would not speak to people who showed by word or look
that they doubted his innocence. She raged at a world which could
be so stupid, so unjust, and so wicked as to slander the good fame
and threaten the life of one whom her heart had crowned with more
than human perfections.
But what availed all her confidence in his purity? There was the
finger of public suspicion pointed at him, and there was the
hangman lying in wait for his precious life. She was almost mad with
shame, indignation, grief, and terror. She rose as pale as a ghost
from sleepless nights, during which she had striven in vain to
unravel this terrible mystery, and prayed in vain that Heaven would
revoke this unbearable calamity. Day by day she visited her
betrothed in his cell, and cheered him with the sympathy of her
trusting and loving soul. The conversations which took place on
these occasions were so naïve and childlike in their honest utterance
of emotion that I almost dread to record them, lest the deliberate,
unpalpitating sense of criticism should pronounce them sickening,
and mark them for ridicule.
“Darling,” she once said to him, “we must be married. Whether
you are to live or to die, I must be your wife.”
He knelt down and kissed the hem of her dress in adoration of
such self-sacrifice.
“Ah, my love, I never before knew what you were,” he whispered,
as she leaned forward, caught his head in her hands, dragged it into
her lap, and covered it with kisses and tears. “Ah, my love, you are

too good. I cannot accept such a sacrifice. When I am cleared
publicly of this horrible charge, then I will ask you once more if you
dare be my wife.”
“Dare! O, how can you say such things!” she sobbed. “Don’t you
know that you are more to me than the whole universe? Don’t you
know that I would marry you, even if I knew you were guilty?”
There is no reasoning with this sublime passion of love, when it is
truly itself. There is no reasoning with it; and Heaven be thanked
that it is so! It is well to have one impulse in the world which has no
egoism, which rejoices in self-immolation for the sake of its object,
which is among emotions what a martyr is among men.
Foster’s response was worthy of the girl’s declaration. “My love,”
he whispered, “I have been bemoaning my ruined life, but I must
bemoan it no more. It is success enough for any man to be loved by
you, and as you love me.”
“No, no!” protested Bessie. “It is not success enough for you. No
success is enough for you. You deserve everything that ever man did
deserve. And here you are insulted, trampled upon, and threatened.
O, it is shameful and horrible!”
“My child, you must not help to break me down,” implored Foster,
feeling that he was turning weak under the thought of his calamity.
She started towards him in a spasm of remorse; it was as if she
had suddenly become aware that she had stabbed him; her face and
her attitude were full of self-reproach.
“O my darling, do I make you more wretched?” she asked, “when
I would die for you! when you are my all! O, there is not a minute
when I am worthy of you!”
These interviews left Foster possessed of a few minutes of
consolation and peace, which would soon change into an increased
poverty of despair and rage. For the first few days of his
imprisonment his prevalent feeling was anger. He could not in the
least accept his position; he would not look upon himself as one who

was suspected with justice, or even with the slightest show of
probability; he would not admit that society was pardonable for its
doubts of him. He was not satisfied with mere hope of escape; on
the contrary, he considered his accusers shamefully and wickedly
blameworthy; he was angry at them, and wanted to wreak upon
them a stern vengeance.
As the imprisonment dragged on, however, and his mind lost its
tension under the pressure of trouble, there came moments when he
did not quite know himself. It seemed to him that this man, who was
charged with murder, was some one else, for whose character he
could not stand security, and who might be guilty. He almost looked
upon him with suspicion; he half joined the public in condemning
him unheard. Perhaps this mental confusion was the foreshadowing
of that insane state of mind in which prisoners have confessed
themselves guilty of murders which they had not committed, and
which have been eventually brought home to others. There are
twilights between reason and unreason. The descent from the one
condition to the other is oftener a slope than a precipice.
Meanwhile Bessie had, as a matter of course, plans for saving her
lover; and these plans, almost as a matter of course too, were
mainly impracticable. As with all young people and almost all
women, she rebelled against the fixed procedures of society when
they seemed likely to trample on the dictates of her affections. Now
that it was her lover who was under suspicion of murder, it did not
seem a necessity to her that the law should take its course, and, on
the contrary, it seemed to her an atrocity. She knew that he was
guiltless; she knew that he was suffering; why should he be tried?
When told that he must have every legal advantage, she assented to
it eagerly, and drove at once to see Mr. Patterson, and overwhelmed
him with tearful implorations “to do everything,—to do everything
that could be done,—yes, in short, to do everything.” But still she
could not feel that anything ought to be done, except to release at
once this beautiful and blameless victim, and to make him every
conceivable apology. As for bringing him before a court, to answer
with his life whether he were innocent or guilty, it was an injustice

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