The Dead Alive

I took a sudden resolution to go back to England.

When I returned to the farm, it was evening. The lamp was not yet lighted in the hall. Pausing to accustom my eyes to the obscurity indoors, I heard the voice of the lawyer whom we had employed for the defense speaking to some one very earnestly.

“I’m not to blame,” said the voice. “She snatched the paper out of my hand before I was aware of her.”

“Do you want it back?” asked the voice of Miss Meadowcroft.

“No; it’s only copy. If keeping it will help to quiet her, let her keep it by all means. Good evening.”

Saying these last words, the lawyer approached me on his way out of the house. I stopped him without ceremony; I felt an ungovernable curiosity to know more.

“Who snatched the paper out of your hand?” I asked, bluntly.

The lawyer started. I had taken him by surprise. The instinct of professional reticence made him pause before he answered me.

In the brief interval of silence, Miss Meadowcroft replied to my question from the other end of the hall.

“Naomi Colebrook snatched the paper out of his hand.”

“What paper?”

A door opened softly behind me. Naomi herself appeared on the threshold; Naomi herself answered my question.

“I will tell you,” she whispered. “Come in here.”

One candle only was burning in the room. I looked at her by the dim light. My resolution to return to England instantly became one of the lost ideas of my life.

“Good God!” I exclaimed, “what has happened now?”

She handed me the paper which she had taken from the lawyer’s hand.

The “copy” to which he had referred was a copy of the written confession of Silas Meadowcroft on his return to prison. He accused his brother Ambrose of the murder of John Jago. He declared on his oath that he had seen his brother Ambrose commit the crime.

In the popular phrase, I could “hardly believe my own eyes.” I read the last sentences of the confession for the second time:

“…I heard their voices at the limekiln. They were having words about Cousin Naomi. I ran to the place to part them. I was not in time. I saw Ambrose strike the deceased a terrible blow on the head with his (Ambrose’s) heavy stick. The deceased dropped without a cry. I put my hand on his heart. He was dead. I was horribly frightened. Ambrose threatened to kill me next if I said a word to any living soul. He took up the body and cast it into the quicklime, and threw the stick in after it. We went on together to the wood. We sat down on a felled tree outside the wood. Ambrose made up the story that we were to tell if what he had done was found out. He made me repeat it after him, like a lesson. We were still at it when Cousin Naomi and Mr. Lefrank came up to us. They know the rest. This, on my oath, is a true confession. I make it of my own free-will, repenting me sincerely that I did not make it before.”

(Signed)

“SILAS MEADOWCROFT.”

I laid down the paper, and looked at Naomi once more. She spoke to me with a strange composure. Immovable determination was in her eye; immovable determination was in her voice.

“Silas has lied away his brother’s life to save himself,” she said. “I see cowardly falsehood and cowardly cruelty in every line on that paper. Ambrose is innocent, and the time has come to prove it.”

“You forget,” I said, “that we have just failed to prove it.”

“John Jago is alive, in hiding from us and from all who know him,” she went on. “Help me, friend Lefrank, to advertise for him in the newspapers.”

I drew back from her in speechless distress. I own I believed that the new misery which had fallen on her had affected her brain.

“You don’t believe it,” she said. “Shut the door.”

I obeyed her. She seated herself, and pointed to a chair near her.

“Sit down,” she proceeded. “I am going to do a wrong thing; but there is no help for it. I am going to break a sacred promise. You remember that moonlight night when I met him on the garden walk?”

“John Jago?”

“Yes. Now listen. I am going to tell you what passed between John Jago and me.”

CHAPTER IX. THE ADVERTISEMENT.

I WAITED in silence for the disclosure that was now to come. Naomi began by asking me a question.

“You remember when we went to see Ambrose in the prison?” she said.

“Perfectly.”

“Ambrose told us of something which his villain of a brother said of John Jago and me. Do you remember what it was?”

I remembered perfectly. Silas had said, “John Jago is too sweet on Naomi not to come back.”

“That’s so,” Naomi remarked when I had repeated the words. “I couldn’t help starting when I heard what Silas had said; and I thought you noticed me.”

“I did notice you.”