"It is, dear wife," cried Andrew Zane. "Come to my heart."
Reverend Silas Van de Lear was drawing his latest breaths in the house of one of his elder sons, and only his lips were seen to move in silent prayer, when a younger fellow-clergyman entering, to a cluster of his cloth attending there, said audibly:
"This is a strange _denouement_ to the great Kensington scandal, which has happened this afternoon."
The large, voluptuous lady with the slowly declining eyelids raised them quietly as in languid surprise.
"You mean the Zane murder? What is it?" asked a minister, while others gathered around, showing the ministry to have human curiosity even in the hour and article of death.
"Miss Agnes Wilt, the especial favorite of our dying patriarch here, was married to young Andrew Zane some time before his father died. There was no murder in the case. Zane the elder, in one of his frequent fits of wild and arrogant rage, which were little less than insanity, killed his partner, Rainey, and in as sudden remorse took his own life."
"That is not quite clear, but the local population here is in a violent reaction against the accusers of young Zane and his wife. The church recovers a valuable woman in Agnes Zane."
Mrs. Knox Van de Lear had a vial of smelling salts in her hand, and this vial dropping suddenly on the floor called attention to the fact that the lady had a little swooning turn. She was herself again in a minute, and her eyes slowly unclosed and lifted their tender curtains prettily.
"I am so glad for dear Agnes," she said with a natural loudness in that hushed room. "It even made me forget papa to find Agnes innocent."
The dying minister seemed to catch the words. A ministerial colleague bent down to hear his low articulation:
"Agnes innocent!" said Silas Van de Lear, and strove to clasp his hands. "The praying of the righteous availeth much!"
The physician said the good man's pulse ceased to beat at that minute, and they raised around his scarcely cold remains a hymn to heaven.
Mean time, at the alderman's court, a surprising scene was witnessed. For a few minutes everybody was in a frenzy of delight, and Duff Salter was the hero of the hour. The alderman made no effort to discipline any person; people hugged and laughed, and entreated to shake hands with Andrew Zane, and in the pleasing confusion Calvin Van de Lear slunk out, white as one condemned to be whipped.