Alix had promised not to send her father to the gallows. She was
almost in a stupor after the complete physical and mental collapse,
but she knew what she was doing, she realized what she was promising
in return for the blow that had robbed her of the man she loved.
No one will ever know just what took place in that darkened
sitting-room, for the story as afterwards related was significantly
lacking in details. The light had been extinguished and the doors
silently closed by the slayer. The stiffening body of Edward Crown
out in the snow was not more silent than the interior of the old
farmhouse, apart from the room in which David Windom pleaded with
his stricken daughter.
And all the while he was begging her to save him from the consequences
of his crime, his brain was searching for the means to dispose
of the body of Edward Crown and to provide an explanation for the
return of Alix without her husband.
Circumstances favoured him in a surprising manner. Young Crown and
his wife had travelled down from Chicago in a day coach, and they
had left the train at a small way station some five miles west of
the Windom farm. Crown was penniless. He did not possess the means
to engage a vehicle to transport them from the city to the farm,
nor the money to secure lodging for the night in the cheapest hotel.
Alix's pride stood in the way of an appeal to her husband's father
or to any one of his friends for assistance.
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