Another point of confusion had been the dismantling of his room that Monday night, some time between the visit of Temple Hope and the return of Mr. Holcombe.  This was to obtain the scrap of paper containing the list of clues as suggested by Mr. Howell, a clue that might have brought about a premature discovery of the so-called hoax.

To the girl he had told nothing of his plan.  But he had told her she was to leave town on an early train the next morning, going as his wife; that he wished her to wear the black and white dress and hat, for reasons that he would explain later, and to be veiled heavily, that to the young man who would put her on the train, and who had seen Jennie Brice only once, she was to be Jennie Brice; to say as little as possible and not to raise her veil.  Her further instructions were simple:  to go to the place at Horner where Jennie Brice had planned to go, but to use the name of “Bellows” there.  And after she had been there for a day or two, to go as quietly as possible to New York.  He gave her the address of a boarding-house where he could write her, and where he would join her later.

He reasoned in this way:  That as Alice Murray was to impersonate Jennie Brice, and Jennie Brice hiding from her husband, she would naturally discard her name.  The name “Bellows” had been hers by a previous marriage and she might easily resume it.  Thus, to establish his innocence, he had not only the evidence of Howell and Bronson that the whole thing was a gigantic hoax; he had the evidence of Howell that he had started Jennie Brice to Horner that Monday morning, that she had reached Horner, had there assumed an incognito, as Mr. Pitman would say, and had later disappeared from there, maliciously concealing herself to work his undoing.

In all probability he would have gone free, the richer by a hundred dollars for each week of his imprisonment, but for two things:  the flood, which had brought opportunity to his door, had brought Mr Holcombe to feed Peter, the dog.  And the same flood, which should have carried the headless body as far as Cairo, or even farther on down the Mississippi, had rejected it in an eddy below a clay bluff at Sewickley, with its pitiful covering washed from the scar.

Well, it is all over now.  Mr Ladley is dead, and Alice Murray, and even Peter lies in the yard.  Mr Reynolds made a small wooden cross over Peter’s grave, and carved “Till we meet again” on it.  I dare say the next flood will find it in Molly Maguire’s kitchen.

Mr Howell and Lida are married.  Mr Howell inherited some money, I believe, and what with that and Lida declaring she would either marry him in a church or run off to Steubenville, Ohio, Alma had to consent.  I went to the wedding and stood near the door, while Alma swept in, in lavender chiffon and rose point lace.  She has not improved with age, has Alma.  But Lida?  Lida, under my mother’s wedding veil, with her eyes like stars, seeing no one in the church in all that throng but the boy who waited at the end of the long church aisle-I wanted to run out and claim her, my own blood, my more than child.