Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1912-09-11
CHAPTER XII.
More Discoveries.
It was Louise with Hugh Crandall.

The worse the injury the less it
hurts at the moment. I once saw a
man with both legs cut off laughing
him from under a car. Though he
died in ten minutes, l doubt if he suf-
fered half as much as if he had
bumped his head or had run a splinter
under his thumb-nail. 1t is when you
are MORALLY hurt and live that the
pain becomes so terrible.
In the few minutes 1 had had with
Louise | had not realized the depth of
the wound in my heart her conduct
toward me had made. Even when /
saw her dash away from me in an au-
tomobile, panied though | was that our
interview should have been cut short,
| still did not comprehend what a ter
ribfe blow 1t was that had befallen
me. 1t was the sight as l left the
ferry of the automobile dashing by,
with Louise-the woman 1 loved
seated beside Hugh CrandaIl, that
gave new poignancy to my pain. that
added to the fires of jealousy, that
made me understand to the full the
dire import of what had happened.
Louise had lied to me.
Crandall had been in the house. She
had seen him. She had left me to
join him. She had even deserted her
helpless sister and her dying father
to go with him. And all the while her
lips had protested that no one had
been in the house but the doctors and
nurses.
AS | paced the platform and paced
it back again, waiting two weary hours
for an Ardway train, as / sat for two
unending hours more in the long ride
through New Jersey, like a poisoned
knife, cutting my heart to shreds and
cutting the shreds again, the thought
kept coming back to me over and
over: "She lied to me-"
Quarter a man alive, pour molten
metal into his eyeballs, feed him salt
fish and cut off water, bury him alive
in quicklime, devise what torture you
will and double it, the pain and agony
can not equal that which comes to a
man who, believing in and trusting
and loving a woman with his whole
heart, is forced to admit to himself
that she has deceived him-that she
has lied to him. In those awful hours
l came to know the seven bells. I
went through all of them.
Only ray Of comfort came to
me-. AS had asked myself why did
she lie?" 1 found myself believing that
she had done so, not Of her own free
will, but impelled by some motive so
powerful that she could not resist it.
That it was the influence Of Crandall
l could no doubt. He had so preyed
On her fears for her father and sister,
perhaps on her fear for me, that he
had induced her to try to persuade me
to give up my Investigation and had
made her promise to accompany him
On some doubtful secret mission.
"It is not my secret"
l recalled the piteous cry my en-
treaties had wrung from her lips, and
found the logical explanation of it in
her having been terrorized by that
villain, Crandall. If I could have found
him at the moment l could have killed
him with my naked hands.
Yet even though l was convinced
that Louise had lied to me, 1 began to
feel that whatever she had done, what
ever she was now doing, was in the
belief that she was acting for the best
for her dear ones, for me.
My duty to her, my duty to myself,
I reasoned, demanded that l do my
utmost to solve the hideous mystery
and free her from the fear that l was
sur was responsible for her strange