"In the name of Heaven, what leads you to imagine such impossible
guilt!"
"Good knowledge of the facts--that this month, eight years ago, in the
little Methodist chapel of the navy yard, in Washington City, you made
Marian Mayfield your wife--that this night seven years since, in just
such a storm as this, on the beach below Pine Bluff, you met and
murdered Marian Willcoxen! And, moreover, I as sure you, that these
facts which I tell you now, to-morrow I will lay before a magistrate,
together with all the corroborating proof in my possession!"
"And what proof can you have?"
"A gentleman who, unknown and unsuspected, witnessed the private
ceremony between yourself and Marian; a packet of French letters,
written by yourself from Glasgow, to Marian, in St. Mary's, in the
spring of 1823; a note found in the pocket of her dress, appointing the
fatal meeting on the beach where she perished. Two physicians, who can
testify to your unaccountable absence from the deathbed of your parent
on the night of the murder, and also to the distraction of your manner
when you returned late the next morning."
"And this," said Thurston, gazing in mournful amazement upon her; "this
is the child that I have nourished and brought up in my house! She can
believe me guilty of such atrocious crime--she can aim at my honor and
my life such a deadly blow?"
"Alas! alas! it is my duty! it is my fate! I cannot escape it! I have
bound my soul by a fearful oath! I cannot evade it! I shall not survive
it! Oh, all the heaven is black with doom, and all the earth tainted
with blood!" cried Miriam, wildly.
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