Then there was a dead silence.

Rotha was the first to break the awful stillness.

She knelt over her father's prostrate form, and said amid stifling sobs,-- "Tell them it is not true; tell them so, father." The murmur came again.

She understood it, and rose up with flashing eyes.
"_I_ tell them it is not true," she said.

Then stepping firmly to the bedside, she cried, "Look you all! I, his daughter, touch here this dead man's hand, and call on God to give a sign if my father did this thing." So saying, she took the hand of the murdered man, and held it convulsively in her own.
The murmur died to a hush of suspense and horror.