"The explanation to which I allude is this," said he. "My mother for
the past three months has been the victim of many unwholesome
delusions. The sickness of my father, which was somewhat prolonged,
made great inroads upon her strength; and his death, followed by the
necessity of parting with Mrs. Harrington--whom you perhaps know was
for family reasons married immediately upon my father's decease,--
sowed the seed of a mental weakness which culminated on her deathbed
into a positive delirium. She had a notion, and has had it for
weeks, unknown to every one but my brother and myself, that Mrs.
Harrington had been the occasion of some great misfortune to us;
whereas the innocent girl had done nothing but follow out her
mother's wishes, both in her marriage and in her settlement in a
distant town. But the love my mother had felt for her was always
the ruling passion of her life, and when she came to find herself
robbed of a presence that was actually necessary to her well-being,
her mind, by some strange subtlety of disease I do not profess to
understand, confounded the source of her grief with its cause,
attributing to this well-beloved daughter's will the suffering,
which only sprang out of the circumstances of the case. As to her
wild remarks in regard to Mr. Barrows," he added, with studied
indifference, "and the oath she wished us to take, that was but an
outgrowth of the shock she had received in hearing of the
clergyman's death. For, of course, I need not assure you, Miss
Sterling, that for all our readiness to take the oath she demanded,
neither my brother nor myself ever were at the mill, or knew any
more of the manner or cause of Mr. Barrows' death than you do."

This distinct denial, made in quiet but emphatic tones, caused me to
look up at him with what was perhaps something of an expressive
glance. For at its utterance the longing cry had risen in my heart,