Meanwhile I was taken up with Pen. The pretty fool was seated on a
chair, all dressed up in her Sunday finery, and rocking backward and
forward, crying, "Oh, oh, ah!" like a lamb saying, "Baa, baa, baa!" She
never had much sense. I had to shake her to get a reasonable word.
She mopped her eyes, and I heard her gasp out that my aunt had at last
decided that I was the person who had thinned her hoards. This was bad,
but involved less inconvenience than it might have done an hour earlier.
Amid tears Pen told me that a detective had been at the house inquiring
for me. When this happened it seems that the poor little goose had tried
to fool deaf Aunt Rachel with some made-up story as to the man having
come about taxes. I suppose the girl was not any too sharp, and the old
woman, I guess, read enough from merely seeing the man's lips. You never
could keep anything from her, and she was both curious and suspicious.
She assured the officer that I was a thief, and hoped I might be caught.
I could not learn whether the man told Pen any particulars, but as I was
slowly getting at the facts we heard a loud scream and a heavy fall.

Pen said, "Oh, oh!" and we hurried upstairs. There was the old woman
on the floor, her face twitching to right, and her breathing a sort of
hoarse croak. The big Bible lay open on the floor, and I knew what had
happened. It was a fit of apoplexy.

At this very unpleasant sight Pen seemed to recover her wits, and said:
"Go away, go away! Oh, brother, brother, now I know you have stolen her
money and killed her, and--and I loved you, I was so proud of you! Oh,
oh!"

This was all very fine, but the advice was good. I said: "Yes, I had
better go. Run and get some one--a doctor. It is a fit of hysterics;
there is no danger. I will write to you. You are quite mistaken."