CHAPTER I - THE SPIDER.

          “Thus far we run before the wind.”

IN the interview which Mr. Byrd had held with Miss Dare he had been conscious of omitting one test which many another man in his place would have made.  This was the utterance of the name of him whom he really believed to be the murderer of Mrs. Clemmens.  Had he spoken this name, had he allowed himself to breathe the words “Craik Mansell” into the ears of this agitated woman, or even gone so far as to allude in the most careless way to the widow’s nephew, he felt sure his daring would have been rewarded by some expression on her part that would have given him a substantial basis for his theories to rest upon.

But he had too much natural chivalry for this.  His feelings as a man got in the way of his instinct as a detective.  Nevertheless, he felt positive that his suspicions in regard to this nephew of Mrs. Clemmens were correct, and set about the task of fitting facts to his theory, with all that settled and dogged determination which follows the pursuit of a stern duty unwillingly embraced.

Two points required instant settling.

First, the truth or falsehood of his supposition as to the identification of the person confronted by Miss Dare in the Syracuse depot with the young man described by Miss Firman as the nephew of Widow Clemmens.

Secondly, the existence or non-existence of proof going to show the presence of this person at or near the house of Mrs. Clemmens, during the time of the assault.

But before proceeding to satisfy himself in regard to these essentials, he went again to the widow’s house and there spent an hour in a careful study of its inner and outer arrangements, with a view to the formation of a complete theory as to the manner and method of the murder.  He found that in default of believing Mr. Hildreth the assailant, one supposition was positively necessary, and this was that the murderer was in the house when this gentleman came to it.  A glance at the diagram on next page will explain why.

The house, as you will see, has but three entrances:  the front door, at which Mr. Hildreth unconsciously stood guard; the kitchen door, also unconsciously guarded during the critical moment by the coming and going of the tramp through the yard; and the dining-room door, which, though to all appearance free from the surveillance of any eye, was so situated in reference to the clock at which the widow stood when attacked, that it was manifestly impossible for any one to enter it and cross the room to the hearth without attracting the attention of her eye if not of her ear.

To be sure, there was the bare possibility of his having come in by the kitchen-door, after the departure of the tramp, but such a contingency was scarcely worth considering.  The almost certain conclusion was that he had been in the house for some time, and was either in the dining-room when Mrs. Clemmens returned to it from her interview with Mr. Hildreth, or else came down to it from the floor above by means of the staircase that so strangely descended into that very room.

Another point looked equally clear.  The escape of the murderer ­still in default of considering Mr. Hildreth as such ­must have been by means of one of the back doors, and must have been in the direction of the woods.  To be sure there was a stretch of uneven and marshy ground to be travelled over before the shelter of the trees could be reached; but a person driven by fear could, at a pinch, travel it in five minutes or less; and a momentary calculation on the part of Mr. Byrd sufficed to show him that more time than this had elapsed from the probable instant of assault to the moment when Mr. Ferris opened the side door and looked out upon the swamp.

The dearth of dwellings on the left-hand side of the street, and, consequently, the comparative immunity from observation which was given to that portion of the house which over-looked the swamp, made him conclude that this outlet from the dining-room had been the one made use of in the murderer’s flight.  A glance down the yard to the broken fence that separated the widow’s land from the boggy fields beyond, only tended to increase the probabilities of this supposition, and, alert to gain for himself that full knowledge of the situation necessary to a successful conduct of this mysterious affair, he hastily left the house and started across the swamp, with the idea of penetrating the woods and discovering for himself what opportunity they afforded for concealment or escape.

He had more difficulty in doing this than he expected.  The ground about the hillocks was half-sunk in water, and the least slip to one side invariably precipitated him among the brambles that encumbered this spot.  Still, he compassed his task in little more than five minutes, arriving at the firm ground, and its sturdy growth of beeches and maples, well covered with mud, but so far thoroughly satisfied with the result of his efforts.

The next thing to be done was to search the woods, not for the purpose of picking up clues ­it was too late for that ­but to determine what sort of a refuge they afforded, and whether, in the event of a man’s desiring to penetrate them quickly, many impediments would arise in the shape of tangled underground or loose-lying stones.

He found them remarkably clear; so much so, indeed, that he travelled for some distance into their midst before he realized that he had passed beyond their borders.  More than this, he came ere long upon something like a path, and, following it, emerged into a sort of glade, where, backed up against a high rock, stood a small and seemingly deserted hut.  It was the first object he had met with that in any way suggested the possible presence of man, and advancing to it with cautious steps, he looked into its open door-way.  Nothing met his eyes but an empty interior, and without pausing to bestow upon the building a further thought, he hurried on through a path he saw opening beyond it, till he came to the end of the wood.

Stepping forth, he paused in astonishment.  Instead of having penetrated the woods in a direct line, he found that he had merely described a half circle through them, and now stood on a highway leading directly back into the town.

Likewise, he was in full sight of the terminus of a line of horse-cars that connected this remote region of Sibley with its business portion, and though distant a good mile from the railway depot, was, to all intents and purposes, as near that means of escape as he would have been in the street in front of Widow Clemmens’ house.

Full of thoughts and inly wondering over the fatality that had confined the attention of the authorities to the approaches afforded by the lane, to the utter exclusion of this more circuitous, but certainly more elusive, road of escape, he entered upon the highway, and proceeded to gain the horse-car he saw standing at the head of the road, a few rods away.  As he did so, he for the first time realized just where he was.  The elegant villa of Professor Darling rising before him on the ridge that ran along on the right-hand side of the road, made it at once evident that he was on the borders of that choice and aristocratic quarter known as the West Side.  It was a new region to him, and, pausing for a moment, he cast his eyes over the scene which lay stretched out before him.  He had frequently heard it said that the view commanded by the houses on the ridge was the finest in the town, and he was not disappointed in it.  As he looked across the verdant basin of marshy ground around which the road curved like a horseshoe, he could see the city spread out like a map before him.  So unobstructed, indeed, was the view he had of its various streets and buildings, that he thought he could even detect, amid the taller and more conspicuous dwellings, the humble walls and newly-shingled roof of the widow’s cottage.

But he could not be sure of this; his eyesight was any thing but trustworthy for long distances, and hurrying forward to the car, he took his seat just as it was about to start.

It carried him straight into town, and came to a standstill not ten feet from the railroad depot.  As he left it and betook himself back to his hotel, he gave to his thoughts a distinct though inward expression.

“If,” he mused, “my suppositions in regard to this matter are true, and another man than Mr. Hildreth struck the fatal blow, then I have just travelled over the self-same route he took in his flight.”

But were his suppositions true?  It remained for him to determine.

CHAPTER II - THE FLY.

          Like ­but oh! how different. ­WORDSWORTH.

THE paper mill of Harrison, Goodman & Chamberlain was situated in one of the main thoroughfares of Buffalo.  It was a large but otherwise unpretentious building, and gave employment to a vast number of operatives, mostly female.

Some of these latter might have been surprised, and possibly a little fluttered, one evening, at seeing a well-dressed young gentleman standing at the gate as they came forth, gazing with languid interest from one face to another, as if he were on the look-out for some one of their number.

But they would have been yet more astonished could they have seen him still lingering after the last one had passed, watching with unabated patience the opening and shutting of the small side door devoted to the use of the firm, and such employes as had seats in the office.  It was Mr. Byrd, and his purpose there at this time of day was to see and review the whole rank and file of the young men employed in the place, in the hope of being able to identify the nephew of Mrs. Clemmens by his supposed resemblance to the person whose character of face and form had been so minutely described to him.

For Mr. Byrd was a just man and a thoughtful one, and knowing this identification to be the key-stone of his lately formed theory, desired it to be complete and of no doubtful character.  He accordingly held fast to his position, watching and waiting, seemingly in vain, for the dark, powerful face and the sturdily-built frame of the gentleman whose likeness he had attempted to draw in conjunction with that of Miss Dare.  But, though he saw many men of all sorts and kinds issue from one door or another of this vast building, not one of them struck him with that sudden and unmistakable sense of familiarity which he had a right to expect, and he was just beginning to doubt if the whole framework of his elaborately-formed theory was not destined to fall into ruins, when the small door, already alluded to, opened once more, and a couple of gentlemen came out.

The appearance of one of them gave Mr. Byrd a start.  He was young, powerfully built, wore a large mustache, and had a complexion of unusual swarthiness.  There was character, too, in his face, though not so much as Mr. Byrd had expected to see in the nephew of Mrs. Clemmens.  Still, people differ about degrees of expression, and to his informant this face might have appeared strong.  He was dressed in a business suit, and was without an overcoat ­two facts that made it difficult for Mr. Byrd to get any assistance from the cut and color of his clothes.

But there was enough in the general style and bearing of this person to make Mr. Byrd anxious to know his name.  He, therefore, took it upon himself to follow him ­a proceeding which brought him to the corner just in time to see the two gentlemen separate, and the especial one in whom he was interested, step into a car.

He succeeded in getting a seat in the same car, and for some blocks had the pleasure of watching the back of the supposed Mansell, as he stood on the front platform with the driver.  Then others got in, and the detective’s view was obstructed, and presently ­he never could tell how it was ­he lost track of the person he was shadowing, and when the chance came for another sight of the driver and platform, the young man was gone.

Annoyed beyond expression, Mr. Byrd went to a hotel, and next day sent to the mill and procured the address of Mr. Mansell.  Going to the place named, he found it to be a very respectable boarding-house, and, chancing upon a time when more or less of the rooms were empty, succeeded in procuring for himself an apartment there.

So here he was a fixture in the house supposed by him to hold the murderer of Mrs. Clemmens.  When the time for dinner came, and with it an opportunity for settling the vexed question of Mr. Mansell’s identity not only with the man in the Syracuse depot, but with the person who had eluded his pursuit the day before, something of the excitement of the hunter in view of his game seized upon this hitherto imperturbable detective, and it was with difficulty he could sustain his usual rôle of fashionable indifference.

He arrived at the table before any of the other boarders, and presently a goodly array of amiable matrons, old and young gentlemen, and pretty girls came filing into the room, and finally ­yes, finally ­the gentleman whom he had followed from the mill the day before, and whom he now had no hesitation in fixing upon as Mr. Mansell.

But the satisfaction occasioned by the settlement of this perplexing question was dampened somewhat by a sudden and uneasy sense of being himself at a disadvantage.  Why he should feel thus he did not know.  Perhaps the almost imperceptible change which took place in that gentleman’s face as their eyes first met, may have caused the unlooked-for sensation; though why Mr. Mansell should change at the sight of one who must have been a perfect stranger to him, was more than Mr. Byrd could understand.  It was enough that the latter felt he had made a mistake in not having donned a disguise before entering this house, and that, oppressed by the idea, he withdrew his attention from the man he had come to watch, and fixed it upon more immediate and personal matters.

The meal was half over.  Mr. Byrd who, as a stranger of more than ordinary good looks and prepossessing manners, had been placed by the obliging landlady between her own daughter and a lady of doubtful attractions, was endeavoring to improve his advantages and make himself as agreeable as possible to both of his neighbors, when he heard a lady near him say aloud, “You are late, Mr. Mansell,” and, looking up in his amazement, saw entering the door ­ Well, in the presence of the real owner of this name, he wondered he ever could have fixed upon the other man as the original of the person that had been described to him.  The strong face, the sombre expression, the herculean frame, were unique, and in the comparison which they inevitably called forth, made all other men in the room look dwarfed if not actually commonplace.

Greatly surprised at this new turn of affairs, and satisfied that he at last had before him the man who had confronted Miss Dare in the Syracuse depot, he turned his attention back to the ladies.  He, however, took care to keep one ear open on the side of the new-comer, in the hope of gleaning from his style and manner of conversation some notion of his disposition and nature.

But Craik Mansell was at no time a talkative man, and at this especial period of his career was less inclined than ever to enter into the trivial debates or good-natured repartee that was the staple of conversation at Mrs. Hart’s table.

So Mr. Byrd’s wishes in this regard were foiled.  He succeeded, however, in assuring himself by a square look, into the other’s face, that to whatever temptation this man may have succumbed, or of whatever crime he may have been guilty, he was by nature neither cold, cruel, nor treacherous, and that the deadly blow, if dealt by him, was the offspring of some sudden impulse or violent ebullition of temper, and was being repented of with every breath he drew.

But this discovery, though it modified Mr. Byrd’s own sense of personal revolt against the man, could not influence him in the discharge of his duty, which was to save another of less interesting and perhaps less valuable traits of character from the consequences of a crime he had never committed.  It was, therefore, no more than just, that, upon withdrawing from the table, he should endeavor to put himself in the way of settling that second question, upon whose answer in the affirmative depended the rightful establishment of his secret suspicions.

That was, whether this young man was at or near the house of his aunt at the time when she was assaulted.

Mrs. Hart’s parlors were always thrown open to her boarders in the evening.

There, at any time from seven to ten, you might meet a merry crowd of young people intent upon enjoying themselves, and usually highly successful in their endeavors to do so.  Into this throng Mr. Byrd accordingly insinuated himself, and being of the sort to win instant social recognition, soon found he had but to make his choice in order to win for himself that tete-a-tete conversation from which he hoped so much.  He consequently surveyed the company with a critical eye, and soon made up his mind as to which lady was the most affable in her manners and the least likely to meet his advances with haughty reserve, and having won an introduction to her, sat down at her side with the stern determination of making her talk about Mr. Mansell.

“You have a very charming company here,” he remarked; “the house seems to be filled with a most cheerful class of people.”

“Yes,” was the not-unlooked-for reply.  “We are all merry enough if we except Mr. Mansell.  But, of course, there is excuse for him.  No one expects him to join in our sports.”

“Mr. Mansell? the gentleman who came in late to supper?” repeated Mr. Byrd, with no suggestion of the secret satisfaction he felt at the immediate success of his scheme.

“Yes, he is in great trouble, you know; is the nephew of the woman who was killed a few days ago at Sibley, don’t you remember?  The widow lady who was struck on the head by a man of the name of Hildreth, and who died after uttering something about a ring, supposed by many to be an attempt on her part to describe the murderer?”

“Yes,” was the slow, almost languid, response; “and a dreadful thing, too; quite horrifying in its nature.  And so this Mr. Mansell is her nephew?” he suggestively repeated.  “Odd!  I suppose he has told you all about the affair?”

“He?  Mercy!  I don’t suppose you could get him to say anything about it to save your life.  He isn’t of the talking sort.  Besides, I don’t believe he knows any more about it than you or I. He hasn’t been to Sibley.”

“Didn’t he go to the funeral?”

“No; he said he was too ill; and indeed he was shut up one whole day with a terrible sore throat.  He is the heir, too, of all her savings, they say; but he won’t go to Sibley.  Some folks think it is queer, but I ­”

Here her eyes wandered and her almost serious look vanished in a somewhat coquettish smile.  Following her gaze with his own, Mr. Byrd perceived a gentleman approaching.  It was the one he had first taken for Mr. Mansell.

“Beg pardon,” was the somewhat abrupt salutation with which this person advanced.  “But they are proposing a game in the next room, and Miss Clayton’s assistance is considered absolutely indispensable.”

“Mr. Brown, first allow me to make you acquainted with Mr. Byrd,” said the light-hearted damsel, with a gracious inclination.  “As you are both strangers, it is well for you to know each other, especially as I expect you to join in our games.”

“Thank you,” protested Mr. Brown, “but I don’t play games.”  Then seeing the deep bow of acquiescence which Mr. Byrd was making, added, with what appeared to be a touch of jealousy, “Except under strong provocation,” and holding out his arm, offered to escort the young lady into the next room.

With an apologetic glance at Mr. Byrd, she accepted the attention proffered her, and speedily vanished into the midst of the laughing group that awaited her.

Mr. Byrd found himself alone.

“Check number one,” thought he; and he bestowed any thing but an amiable benediction upon the man who had interrupted him in the midst of so promising a conversation.

His next move was in the direction of the landlady’s daughter, who, being somewhat shy, favored a retired nook behind the piano.  They had been neighbors at table, and he could at once address her without fear of seeming obtrusive.

“I do not see here the dark young gentleman whom you call Mr. Mansell?” he remarked, inquiringly.

“Oh, no; he is in trouble.  A near relative of his was murdered in cold blood the other day, and under the most aggravating circumstances.  Haven’t you heard about it?  She was a Mrs. Clemmens, and lived in Sibley.  It was in all the papers.”

“Ah, yes; I remember about it very well.  And so he is her nephew,” he went on, recklessly repeating himself in his determination to elicit all he could from these young and thoughtless misses.  “A peculiar-looking young man; has the air of thoroughly understanding himself.”

“Yes, he is very smart, they say.”

“Does he never talk?”

“Oh, yes; that is, he used to; but, since his aunt’s death, we don’t expect it.  He is very much interested in machinery, and has invented something ­”

“Oh, Clara, you are not going to sit here,” interposed the reproachful voice of a saucy-eyed maiden, who at this moment peeped around the corner of the piano.  “We want all the recruits we can get,” she cried, with a sudden blush, as she encountered the glance of Mr. Byrd.  “Do come, and bring the gentleman too.”  And she slipped away to join that very Mr. Brown who, by his importunities, had been the occasion of the former interruption from which Mr. Byrd had suffered.

“That man and I will quarrel yet,” was the mental exclamation with which the detective rose.  “Shall we join your friends?” asked he, assuming an unconcern he was far from feeling.

“Yes, if you please,” was the somewhat timid, though evidently pleased, reply.

And Mr. Byrd noted down in his own mind check number two.

The game was a protracted one.  Twice did he think to escape from the merry crowd he had entered, and twice did he fail to do so.  The indefatigable Brown would not let him slip, and it was only by a positive exertion of his will that he finally succeeded in withdrawing himself.

“I wish to have a word with your mother,” he explained, in reply to the look of protest with which Miss Hart honored his departure.  “I hear she retires early; so you will excuse me if I leave somewhat abruptly.”

And to Mrs. Hart’s apartment he at once proceeded, and, by dint of his easy assurance, soon succeeded in leading her, as he had already done the rest, into a discussion of the one topic for which he had an interest.  He had not time, however, to glean much from her, for, just as she was making the admission that Mr. Mansell had not been home at the time of the murder, a knock was heard at the door, and, with an affable bow and a short, quick stare of surprise at Mr. Byrd, the ubiquitous Mr. Brown stepped in and took a seat on the sofa, with every appearance of intending to make a call.

At this third check, Mr. Byrd was more than annoyed.  Rising, however, with the most amiable courtesy, he bowed his acknowledgments to the landlady, and, without heeding her pressing invitation to remain and make the acquaintance of Mr. Brown, left the room and betook himself back to the parlors.

He was just one minute too late.  The last of the boarders had gone up-stairs, and only an empty room met his eyes.

He at once ascended to his own apartment.  It was on the fourth floor.  There were many other rooms on this floor, and for a moment he could not remember which was his own door.  At last, however, he felt sure it was the third one from the stairs, and, going to it, gave a short knock in case of mistake, and, hearing no reply, opened it and went in.

The first glance assured him that his recollection had played him false, and that he was in the wrong room.  The second, that he was in that of Mr. Mansell.  The sight of the small model of a delicate and intricate machine that stood in full view on a table before him would have been sufficient assurance of this fact, even if the inventor himself had been absent.  But he was there.  Seated at a table, with his back to the door, and his head bowed forward on his arms, he presented such a picture of misery or despair, that Mr. Byrd felt his sympathies touched in spite of himself, and hastily stumbling backward, was about to confusedly withdraw, when a doubt struck him as to the condition of the deathly, still, and somewhat pallid figure before him, and, stepping hurriedly forward, he spoke the young man’s name, and, failing to elicit a response, laid his hand on his shoulder, with an apology for disturbing him, and an inquiry as to how he felt.

The touch acted where the voice had failed.  Leaping from his partly recumbent position, Craik Mansell faced the intruder with indignant inquiry written in every line of his white and determined face.

“To what do I owe this intrusion?” he cried, his nostrils expanding and contracting with an anger that proved the violence of his nature when aroused.

“First, to my carelessness,” responded Mr. Byrd; “and, secondly ­” But there he paused, for the first time in his life, perhaps, absolutely robbed of speech.  His eye had fallen upon a picture that the other held clutched in his vigorous right hand.  It was a photograph of Imogene Dare, and it was made conspicuous by two heavy black lines which had been relentlessy drawn across the face in the form of a cross.  “Secondly,” he went on, after a moment, resolutely tearing his gaze away from this startling and suggestive object, “to my fears.  I thought you looked ill, and could not forbear making an effort to reassure myself that all was right.”

“Thank you,” ejaculated the other, in a heavy weariful tone.  “I am perfectly well.”  And with a short bow he partially turned his back, with a distinct intimation that he desired to be left alone.

Mr. Byrd could not resist this appeal.  Glad as he would have been for even a moment’s conversation with this man, he was, perhaps unfortunately, too much of a gentleman to press himself forward against the expressed wishes even of a suspected criminal.  He accordingly withdrew to the door, and was about to open it and go out, when it was flung violently forward, and the ever-obtrusive Brown stepped in.

This second intrusion was more than unhappy Mr. Mansell could stand.  Striding passionately forward, he met the unblushing Brown at full tilt, and angrily pointing to the door, asked if it was not the custom of gentlemen to knock before entering the room of strangers.

“I beg pardon,” said the other, backing across the threshold, with a profuse display of confusion.  “I had no idea of its being a stranger’s room.  I thought it was my own.  I ­I was sure that my door was the third from the stairs.  Excuse me, excuse me.”  And he bustled noisily out.

This precise reproduction of his own train of thought and action confounded Mr. Byrd.

Turning with a deprecatory glance to the perplexed and angry occupant of the room, he said something about not knowing the person who had just left them; and then, conscious that a further contemplation of the stern and suffering countenance before him would unnerve him for the duty he had to perform, hurriedly withdrew.

CHAPTER III - A LAST ATTEMPT.

          When Fortune means to men most good,
          She looks upon them with a threatening eye. ­KING JOHN.

THE sleep of Horace Byrd that night was any thing but refreshing.  In the first place, he was troubled about this fellow Brown, whose last impertinence showed he was a man to be watched, and, if possible, understood.  Secondly, he was haunted by a vision of the unhappy youth he had just left; seeing, again and again, both in his dreams and in the rush of heated fancies which followed his awaking, that picture of utter despair which the opening of his neighbor’s door had revealed.  He could not think of that poor mortal as sleeping.  Whether it was the result of his own sympathetic admiration for Miss Dare, or of some subtle clairvoyance bestowed upon him by the darkness and stillness of the hour, he felt assured that the quiet watch he had interrupted by his careless importunity, had been again established, and that if he could tear down the partition separating their two rooms, he should see that bowed form and buried face crouched despairingly above the disfigured picture.  The depths of human misery and the maddening passions that underlie all crime had been revealed to him for the first time, perhaps, in all their terrible suggestiveness, and he asked himself over and over as he tossed on his uneasy pillow, if he possessed the needful determination to carry on the scheme he had undertaken, in face of the unreasoning sympathies which the fathomless misery of this young man had aroused.  Under the softening influences of the night, he answered, No; but when the sunlight came and the full flush of life with its restless duties and common necessities awoke within him, he decided, Yes.

Mr. Mansell was not at the breakfast-table when Mr. Byrd came down.  His duties at the mill were peremptory, and he had already taken his coffee and gone.  But Mr. Brown was there, and at sight of him Mr. Byrd’s caution took alarm, and he bestowed upon this intrusive busybody a close and searching scrutiny.  It, however, elicited nothing in the way of his own enlightenment beyond the fact that this fellow, total stranger though he seemed, was for some inexplicable reason an enemy to himself or his plans.

Not that Mr. Brown manifested this by any offensive token of dislike or even of mistrust.  On the contrary, he was excessively polite, and let slip no opportunity of dragging Mr. Byrd into the conversation.  Yet, for all that, a secret influence was already at work against the detective, and he could not attribute it to any other source than the jealous efforts of this man.  Miss Hart was actually curt to him, and in the attitude of the various persons about the board he detected a certain reserve which had been entirely absent from their manner the evening before.

But while placing, as he thought, due weight upon this fellow’s animosity, he had no idea to what it would lead, till he went up-stairs.  Mrs. Hart, who had hitherto treated him with the utmost cordiality, now called him into the parlor, and told him frankly that she would be obliged to him if he would let her have his room.  To be sure, she qualified the seeming harshness of her request by an intimation that a permanent occupant had applied for it, and offered to pay his board at the hotel till he could find a room to suit him in another house; but the fact remained that she was really in a flutter to rid herself of him, and no subterfuge could hide it, and Mr. Byrd, to whose plans the full confidence of those around him was essential, found himself obliged to acquiesce in her desires, and announce at once his willingness to depart.

Instantly she was all smiles, and overwhelmed him with overtures of assistance; but he courteously declined her help, and, flying from her apologies with what speed he could, went immediately to his room.  Here he sat down to deliberate.

The facts he had gleaned, despite the interference of his unknown enemy, were three: 

First, that Craik Mansell had found excuses for not attending the inquest, or even the funeral, of his murdered aunt.

Secondly, that he had a strong passion for invention, and had even now the model of a machine on hand.

And third, that he was not at home, wherever else he may have been, on the morning of the murder in Sibley.

“A poor and meagre collection of insignificant facts,” thought Mr. Byrd.  “Too poor and meagre to avail much in stemming the tide threatening to overwhelm Gouverneur Hildreth.”

But what opportunity remained for making them weightier?  He was turned from the house that held the few persons from whom he could hope to glean more complete and satisfactory information, and he did not know where else to seek it unless he went to the mill.  And this was an alternative from which he shrank, as it would, in the first place, necessitate a revelation of his real character; and, secondly, make known the fact that Mr. Mansell was under the surveillance of the police, if not in the actual attitude of a suspected man.

A quick and hearty, “Shure, you are very good, sir!” uttered in the hall without roused him from his meditations and turned his thoughts in a new direction.  What if he could learn something from the servants?  He had not thought of them.  This girl, now, whose work constantly carried her into the various rooms on this floor, would, of course, know whether Mr. Mansell had been away on the day of the murder, even if she could not tell the precise time of his return.  At all events, it was worth while to test her with a question or two before he left, even if he had to resort to the means of spurring her memory with money.  His failure in other directions did not necessitate a failure here.

He accordingly called her in, and showing her a bright silver dollar, asked her if she thought it good enough pay for a short answer to a simple question.

To his great surprise she blushed and drew back, shaking her head and muttering that her mistress didn’t like to have the girls talk to the young men about the house, and finally going off with a determined toss of her frowsy head, that struck Mr. Byrd aghast, and made him believe more than ever that his evil star hung in the ascendant, and that the sooner he quit the house the better.

In ten minutes he was in the street.

But one thing now remained for him to do.  He must make the acquaintance of one of the mill-owners, or possibly of an overseer or accountant, and from him learn where Mr. Mansell had been at the time of his aunt’s murder.  To this duty he devoted the day; but here also he was met by unexpected difficulties.  Though he took pains to disguise himself before proceeding to the mill, all the endeavors which he made to obtain an interview there with any responsible person were utterly fruitless.  Whether his ill-luck at the house had followed him to this place he could not tell, but, for some reason or other, there was not one of the gentlemen for whom he inquired but had some excuse for not seeing him; and, worn out at last with repeated disappointments, if not oppressed by the doubtful looks he received from the various subordinates who carried his messages, he left the building, and proceeded to make use of the only means now left him of compassing his end.

This was to visit Mr. Goodman, the one member of the firm who was not at his post that day, and see if from him he could gather the single fact he was in search of.

“Perhaps the atmosphere of distrust with which I am surrounded in this quarter has not reached this gentleman’s house,” thought he.  And having learned from the directory where that house was, he proceeded immediately to it.

His reception was by no means cordial.  Mr. Goodman had been ill the night before, and was in no mood to see strangers.

“Mansell?” he coolly repeated, in acknowledgment of the other’s inquiry as to whether he had a person of that name in his employ.  “Yes, our book-keeper’s name is Mansell.  May I ask” ­and here Mr. Byrd felt himself subjected to a thorough, if not severe, scrutiny ­“why you come to me with inquiries concerning him?”

“Because,” the determined detective responded, adopting at once the bold course, “you can put me in possession of a fact which it eminently befits the cause of justice to know.  I am an emissary, sir, from the District Attorney at Sibley, and the point I want settled is, where Mr. Mansell was on the morning of the twenty-sixth of September?”

This was business, and the look that involuntarily leaped into Mr. Goodman’s eye proved that he considered it so.  He did not otherwise betray this feeling, however, but turned quite calmly toward a chair, into which he slowly settled himself before replying: 

“And why do you not ask the gentleman himself where he was?  He probably would be quite ready to tell you.”

The inflection he gave to these words warned Mr. Byrd to be careful.  The truth was, Mr. Goodman was Mr. Mansell’s best friend, and as such had his own reasons for not being especially communicative in his regard, to this stranger.  The detective vaguely felt this, and immediately changed his manner.

“I have no doubt of that, sir,” he ingenuously answered.  “But Mr. Mansell has had so much to distress him lately, that I was desirous of saving him from the unpleasantness which such a question would necessarily cause.  It is only a small matter, sir.  A person ­it is not essential to state whom ­has presumed to raise the question among the authorities in Sibley as to whether Mr. Mansell, as heir of poor Mrs. Clemmens’ small property, might not have had some hand in her dreadful death.  There was no proof to sustain the assumption, and Mr. Mansell was not even known to have been in the town on or after the day of her murder; but justice, having listened to the aspersion, felt bound to satisfy itself of its falsity; and I was sent here to learn where Mr. Mansell was upon that fatal day.  I find he was not in Buffalo.  But this does not mean he was in Sibley, and I am sure that, if you will, you can supply me with facts that will lead to a complete and satisfactory alibi for him.”

But the hard caution of the other was not to be moved.

“I am sorry,” said he, “but I can give you no information in regard to Mr. Mansell’s travels.  You will have to ask the gentleman himself.”

“You did not send him out on business of your own, then?”

“No.”

“But you knew he was going?”

“Yes.”

“And can tell when he came back?”

“He was in his place on Wednesday.”

The cold, dry nature of these replies convinced Mr. Byrd that something more than the sullen obstinacy of an uncommunicative man lay behind this determined reticence.  Looking at Mr. Goodman inquiringly, he calmly remarked: 

“You are a friend of Mr. Mansell?”

The answer came quick and coldly: 

“He is a constant visitor at my house.”

Mr. Byrd made a respectful bow.

“You can, then, have no doubts of his ability to prove an alibi?”

“I have no doubts concerning Mr. Mansell,” was the stern and uncompromising reply.

Mr. Byrd at once felt he had received his dismissal.  But before making up his mind to go, he resolved upon one further effort.  Calling to his aid his full power of acting, he slowly shook his head with a thoughtful air, and presently murmured half aloud and half, as it were, to himself: 

“I thought, possibly, he might have gone to Washington.”  Then, with a casual glance at Mr. Goodman, added:  “He is an inventor, I believe?”

“Yes,” was again the laconic response.

“Has he not a machine at present which he desires to bring to the notice of some capitalist?”

“I believe he has,” was the forced and none too amiable answer.

Mr. Byrd at once leaned confidingly forward.

“Don’t you think,” he asked, “that he may have gone to New York to consult with some one about this pet hobby of his?  It would certainly be a natural thing for him to do, and if I only knew it was so, I could go back to Sibley with an easy conscience.”

His disinterested air, and the tone of kindly concern which he had adopted, seemed at last to produce its effect on his companion.  Relaxing a trifle of his austerity, Mr. Goodman went so far as to admit that Mr. Mansell had told him that business connected with his patent had called him out of town; but beyond this he would allow nothing; and Mr. Byrd, baffled in his attempts to elicit from this man any distinct acknowledgment of Mr. Mansell’s whereabouts at the critical time of Mrs. Clemmens’ death, made a final bow and turned toward the door.

It was only at this moment he discovered that Mr. Goodman and himself had not been alone in the room; that curled up in one of the window-seats was a little girl of some ten or twelve years of age, who at the first tokens of his taking his departure slipped shyly down to the floor and ran before him out into the hall.  He found her by the front door when he arrived there.  She was standing with her hand on the knob, and presented such a picture of childish eagerness, tempered by childish timidity, that he involuntarily paused before her with a smile.  She needed no further encouragement.

“Oh, sir, I know about Mr. Mansell!” she cried.  “He wasn’t in that place you talk about, for he wrote a letter to papa just the day before he came back, and the postmark on the envelope was Monteith.  I remember, because it was the name of the man who made our big map.”  And, looking up with that eager zeal which marks the liking of very little folks for some one favorite person among their grown acquaintances, she added, earnestly:  “I do hope you won’t let them say any thing bad about Mr. Mansell, he is so good.”

And without waiting for a reply, she ran off, her curls dancing, her eyes sparkling, all her little innocent form alive with the joy of having done a kindness, as she thought, for her favorite, Mr. Mansell.

Mr. Byrd, on the contrary, felt a strange pang that the information he had sought for so long and vainly should come at last from the lips of an innocent child.

Monteith, as you remember, was the next station to Sibley.

CHAPTER IV - THE END OF A TORTUOUS PATH.

          Thus bad begins and worse remains behind. ­HAMLET.

THE arrest of Mr. Hildreth had naturally quieted public suspicion by fixing attention upon a definite point, so that when Mr. Byrd returned to Sibley he found that he could pursue whatever inquiries he chose without awakening the least mistrust that he was on the look-out for the murderer of Mrs. Clemmens.

The first use he made of his time was to find out if Mr. Mansell, or any man answering to his description, had been seen to take the train from the Sibley station on the afternoon or evening of the fatal Tuesday.  The result was unequivocal.  No such person had been seen there, and no such person was believed to have been at the station at any time during that day.  This was his first disappointment.

He next made the acquaintance of the conductors on that line of street-cars by means of which he believed Mr. Mansell to have made his escape.  But with no better result.  Not one of them remembered having taken up, of late, any passenger from the terminus, of the appearance described by Mr. Byrd.

And this was his second disappointment.

His next duty was obviously to change his plan of action and make the town of Monteith the centre of his inquiries.  But he hesitated to do this till he had made one other visit to the woods in whose recesses he still believed the murderer to have plunged immediately upon dealing the fatal blow.

He went by the way of the street railroad, not wishing to be again seen crossing the bog, and arrived at the hut in the centre of the glade without meeting any one or experiencing the least adventure.

This time he went in, but nothing was to be seen save bare logs, a rough hearth where a fire had once been built, and the rudest sort of bench and table; and hurrying forth again, he looked doubtfully up and down the glade in pursuit of some hint to guide him in his future researches.

Suddenly he received one.  The thick wall of foliage which at first glance revealed but the two outlets already traversed by him, showed upon close inspection a third path, opening well behind the hut, and leading, as he soon discovered, in an entirely opposite direction from that which had taken him to West Side.  Merely stopping to cast one glance at the sun, which was still well overhead, he set out on this new path.  It was longer and much more intricate than the other.  It led through hollows and up steeps, and finally out into an open blackberry patch, where it seemed to terminate.  But a close study of the surrounding bushes, soon disclosed signs of a narrow and thread-like passage curving about a rocky steep.  Entering this he presently found himself drawn again into the woods, which he continued to traverse till he came to a road cut through the heart of the forest, for the use of the lumbermen.  Here he paused.  Should he turn to the right or left?  He decided to turn to the right.  Keeping in the road, which was rough with stones where it was not marked with the hoofs of both horses and cattle, he walked for some distance.  Then he emerged into open space again, and discovered that he was on the hillside overlooking Monteith, and that by a mile or two’s further walk over the highway that was dimly to be descried at the foot of the hill, he would reach the small station devoted to the uses of the quarrymen that worked in this place.

There was no longer any further doubt that this route, and not the other, had been the one taken by Mr. Mansell on that fatal afternoon.  But he was determined not to trust any further to mere surmises; so hastening down the hill, he made his way in the direction of the highway, meaning to take the walk alluded to, and learn for himself what passengers had taken the train at this point on the Tuesday afternoon so often mentioned.

But a barrier rose in his way.  A stream which he had barely noticed in the quick glance he threw over the landscape from the brow of the hill, separated with quite a formidable width of water the hillside from the road, and it was not till he wandered back for some distance along its banks, that he found a bridge.  The time thus lost was considerable, but he did not think of it; and when, after a long and weary tramp, he stepped upon the platform of the small station, he was so eager to learn if he had correctly followed the scent, that he forgot to remark that the road he had taken was any thing but an easy or feasible one for a hasty escape.

The accommodation-trains, which alone stop at this point, had both passed, and he found the station-master at leisure.  A single glance into his honest and intelligent face convinced the detective that he had a reliable man to deal with.  He at once commenced his questions.

“Do many persons besides the quarrymen take the train at this place?” asked he.

“Not many,” was the short but sufficiently good-natured rejoinder.  “I guess I could easily count them on the fingers of one hand,” he laughed.

“You would be apt to notice, then, if a strange gentleman got on board here at any time, would you not?”

“Guess so; not often troubled that way, but sometimes ­sometimes.”

“Can you tell me whether a young man of very dark complexion, heavy mustache, and a determined, if not excited, expression, took the cars here for Monteith, say, any day last week?”

“I don’t know,” mused the man.  “Dark complexion, you say, large mustache; let me see.”

“No dandy,” Mr. Byrd carefully explained, “but a strong man, who believes in work.  He was possibly in a state of somewhat nervous hurry,” he went on, suggestively, “and if he wore an overcoat at all, it was a gray one.”

The face of the man lighted up.

“I seem to remember,” said he.  “Did he have a very bright blue eye and a high color?”

Mr. Byrd nodded.

“And did he carry a peculiarly shaped bag, of which he was very careful?”

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Byrd, but remembering the model, added with quick assurance, “I have no doubt he did”; which seemed to satisfy the other, for he at once cried: 

“I recollect such a person very well.  I noticed him before he got to the station; as soon in fact as he came in sight.  He was walking down the highway, and seemed to be thinking about something.  He’s of the kind to attract attention.  What about him, sir?”

“Nothing.  He was in trouble of some kind, and he went from home without saying where he was going; and his friends are anxious about him, that is all.  Do you think you could swear to his face if you saw it?”

“I think I could.  He was the only stranger that got on to the cars that afternoon.”

“Do you remember, then, the day?”

“Well, no, now, I don’t.”

“But can’t you, if you try?  Wasn’t there something done by you that day which will assist your memory?”

Again that slow “Let me see” showed that the man was pondering.  Suddenly he slapped his thigh and exclaimed: 

“You might be a lawyer’s clerk now, mightn’t you; or, perhaps, a lawyer himself?  I do remember that a large load of stone was sent off that day, and a minute’s look at my book ­ It was Tuesday,” he presently affirmed.

Mr. Byrd drew a deep breath.  There is sadness mixed with the satisfaction of such a triumph.

“I am much obliged to you,” he said, in acknowledgment of the other’s trouble.  “The friends of this gentleman will now have little difficulty in tracing him.  There is but one thing further I should like to make sure of.”

And taking from his memorandum-book the picture he kept concealed there, he showed him the face of Mr. Mansell, now altered to a perfect likeness, and asked him if he recognized it.

The decided Yes which he received made further questions unnecessary.

CHAPTER V - STORM.

          Oh, my offence is rank, it smells to heav’n: 
          It hath the primal eldest curse upon ’t! ­HAMLET.

A DAY had passed.  Mr. Byrd, who no longer had any reason to doubt that he was upon the trail of the real assailant of the Widow Clemmens, had resolved upon a third visit to the woods, this time with the definite object of picking up any clew, however trifling, in support of the fact that Craik Mansell had passed through the glade behind his aunt’s house.

The sky, when he left the hotel, was one vast field of blue; but by the time he reached the terminus of the car-route, and stepped out upon the road leading to the woods, dark clouds had overcast the sun, and a cool wind replaced the quiet zéphyrs which had all day fanned the brilliant autumn foliage.

He did not realize the condition of the atmosphere, however, and proceeded on his way, thinking more of the person he had just perceived issuing from the door-way of Professor Darling’s lofty mansion, than of the low mutterings of distant thunder that now and then disturbed the silence of the woods, or of the ominous, brazen tint which was slowly settling over the huge bank of cloud that filled the northern sky.  For that person was Miss Dare, and her presence here, or anywhere near him, at this time, must of necessity, awaken a most painful train of thought.

But, though unmindful of the storm, he was dimly conscious of the darkness that was settling about him.  Quicker and quicker grew his pace, and at last he almost broke into a run as the heavy pall of a large black cloud swept up over the zenith, and wiped from the heavens the last remnant of blue sky.  One drop fell, then another, then a slow, heavy patter, that bent double the leaves they fell upon, as if a shower of lead had descended upon the heavily writhing forest.  The wind had risen, too, and the vast aisles of that clear and beautiful wood thundered with the swaying of boughs, and the crash here and there of an old and falling limb.  But the lightning delayed.

The blindest or most abstracted man could be ignorant no longer of what all this turmoil meant.  Stopping in the path along which he had been speeding, Mr. Byrd glanced before him and behind, in a momentary calculation of distances, and deciding he could not regain the terminus before the storm burst, pushed on toward the hut.

He reached it just as the first flash of lightning darted down through the heavy darkness, and was about to fling himself against the door, when something ­was it the touch of an invisible hand, or the crash of awful thunder which at this instant plowed up the silence of the forest and woke a pandemonium of echoes about his head? ­stopped him.

He never knew.  He only realized that he shuddered and drew back, with a feeling of great disinclination to enter the low building before him, alone; and that presently taking advantage of another loud crash of falling boughs, he crept around the corner of the hut, and satisfied his doubts by looking into the small, square window opening to the west.

He found there was ample reason for all the hesitation he had felt.  A man was sitting there, who, at the first glimpse, appeared to him to be none other than Craik Mansell.  But reason soon assured him this could not be, though the shape, the attitude ­that old attitude of despair which he remembered so well ­was so startlingly like that of the man whose name was uppermost in his thoughts, that he recoiled in spite of himself.

A second flash swept blinding through the wood.  Mr. Byrd advanced his head and took another glance at the stranger.  It was Mr. Mansell.  No other man would sit so quiet and unmoved during the rush and clatter of a terrible storm.

Look! not a hair of his head has stirred, not a movement has taken place in the hands clasped so convulsively beneath his brow.  He is an image, a stone, and would not hear though the roof fell in.

Mr. Byrd himself forgot the storm, and only queried what his duty was in this strange and surprising emergency.

But before he could come to any definite conclusion, he was subjected to a new sensation.  A stir that was not the result of the wind or the rain had taken place in the forest before him.  A something ­he could not tell what ­was advancing upon him from the path he had himself travelled so short a time before, and its step, if step it were, shook him with a vague apprehension that made him dread to lift his eyes.  But he conquered the unmanly instinct, and merely taking the precaution to step somewhat further back from view, looked in the direction of his fears, and saw a tall, firmly-built woman, whose grandly poised head, held high, in defiance of the gale, the lightning, and the rain, proclaimed her to be none other than Imogene Dare.

It was a juxtaposition of mental, moral, and physical forces that almost took Mr. Byrd’s breath away.  He had no doubt whom she had come to see, or to what sort of a tryst he was about to be made an unwilling witness.  But he could not have moved if the blast then surging through the trees had uprooted the huge pine behind which he had involuntarily drawn at the first impression he had received of her approach.  He must watch that white face of hers slowly evolve itself from the surrounding darkness, and he must be present when the dreadful bolt swept down from heaven, if only to see her eyes in the flare of its ghostly flame.

It came while she was crossing the glade.  Fierce, blinding, more vivid and searching than at any time before, it flashed down through the cringing boughs, and, like a mantle of fire, enveloped her form, throwing out its every outline, and making of the strong and beautiful face an electric vision which Mr. Byrd was never able to forget.

A sudden swoop of wind followed, flinging her almost to the ground, but Mr. Byrd knew from that moment that neither wind nor lightning, not even the fear of death, would stop this woman if once she was determined upon any course.

Dreading the next few moments inexpressibly, yet forcing himself, as a detective, to remain at his post, though every instinct of his nature rebelled, Mr. Byrd drew himself up against the side of the low hut and listened.  Her voice, rising between the mutterings of thunder and the roar of the ceaseless gale, was plainly to be heard.

“Craik Mansell,” said she, in a strained tone, that was not without its severity, “you sent for me, and I am here.”

Ah, this was her mode of greeting, was it?  Mr. Byrd felt his breath come easier, and listened for the reply with intensest interest.

But it did not come.  The low rumbling of the thunder went on, and the wind howled through the gruesome forest, but the man she had addressed did not speak.

“Craik!” Her voice still came from the door-way, where she had seemingly taken her stand.  “Do you not hear me?”

A stifled groan was the sole reply.

She appeared to take one step forward, but no more.

“I can understand,” said she, and Mr. Byrd had no difficulty in hearing her words, though the turmoil overhead was almost deafening, “why the restlessness of despair should drive you into seeking this interview.  I have longed to see you too, if only to tell you that I wish heaven’s thunderbolts had fallen upon us both on that day when we sat and talked of our future prospects and ­”

A lurid flash cut short her words.  Strange and awesome sounds awoke in the air above, and the next moment a great branch fell crashing down upon the roof of the hut, beating in one corner, and sliding thence heavily to the ground, where it lay with all its quivering leaves uppermost, not two feet from the door-way where this woman stood.

A shriek like that of a lost spirit went up from her lips.

“I thought the vengeance of heaven had fallen!” she gasped.  And for a moment not a sound was heard within or without the hut, save that low flutter of the disturbed leaves.  “It is not to be,” she then whispered, with a return of her old calmness, that was worse than any shriek.  “Murder is not to be avenged thus.”  Then, shortly:  “A dark and hideous line of blood is drawn between you and me, Craik Mansell. I cannot pass it, and you must not, forever and forever and forever.  But that does not hinder me from wishing to help you, and so I ask, in all sincerity, What is it you want me to do for you to-day?”

A response came this time.

“Show me how to escape the consequences of my act,” were his words, uttered in a low and muffled voice.

She did not answer at once.

“Are you threatened?” she inquired at last, in a tone that proved she had drawn one step nearer to the bowed form and hidden face of the person she addressed.

“My conscience threatens me,” was the almost stifled reply.

Again that heavy silence, all the more impressive that the moments before had been so prolific of heaven’s most terrible noises.

“You suffer because another man is forced to endure suspicion for a crime he never committed,” she whisperingly exclaimed.

Only a groan answered her; and the moments grew heavier and heavier, more and more oppressive, though the hitherto accompanying outcries of the forest had ceased, and a faint lightening of the heavy darkness was taking place overhead.  Mr. Byrd felt the pressure of the situation so powerfully, he drew near to the window he had hitherto avoided, and looked in.  She was standing a foot behind the crouched figure of the man, between whom and herself she had avowed a line of blood to be drawn.  As he looked she spoke.

“Craik,” said she, and the deathless yearning of love spoke in her voice at last, “there is but one thing to do.  Expiate your guilt by acknowledging it.  Save the innocent from unmerited suspicion, and trust to the mercy of God.  It is the only advice I can give you.  I know no other road to peace.  If I did ­” She stopped, choked by the terror of her own thoughts.  “Craik,” she murmured, at last, “on the day I hear of your having made this confession, I vow to take an oath of celibacy for life.  It is the only recompense I can offer for the misery and sin into which our mutual mad ambitions have plunged you.”

And subduing with a look of inexpressible anguish an evident longing to lay her hand in final caress upon that bended head, she gave him one parting look, and then, with a quick shudder, hurried away, and buried herself amid the darkness of the wet and shivering woods.

CHAPTER VI - A SURPRISE.

          Season your admiration for awhile. ­HAMLET.

WHEN all was still again, Mr. Byrd advanced from his place of concealment, and softly entered the hut.  Its solitary occupant sat as before, with his head bent down upon his clasped hands.  But at the first sound of Mr. Byrd’s approach he rose and turned.  The shock of the discovery which followed sent the detective reeling back against the door.  The person who faced him with such quiet assurance was not Craik Mansell.

CHAPTER VII - A BRACE OF DETECTIVES.

          Hath this fellow no feeling of his business? ­HAMLET.

          No action, whether foul or fair,
          Is ever done, but it leaves somewhere
          A record. ­LONGFELLOW.

“SO there are two of us!  I thought as much when I first set eyes upon your face in Buffalo!”

This exclamation, uttered in a dry and musing tone, woke Mr. Byrd from the stupor into which this astonishing discovery had thrown him.  Advancing upon the stranger, who in size, shape, and coloring was almost the fac-simile of the person he had so successfully represented, Mr. Byrd looked him scrutinizingly over.

The man bore the ordeal with equanimity; he even smiled.

“You don’t recognize me, I see.”

Mr. Byrd at once recoiled.

“Ah!” cried he, “you are that Jack-in-the-box, Brown!”

“Alias Frank Hickory, at your service.”

This name, so unexpected, called up a flush of mingled surprise and indignation to Mr. Byrd’s cheek.

“I thought ­” he began.

“Don’t think,” interrupted the other, who, when excited, affected laconicism, “know.”  Then, with affability, proceeded, “You are the gentleman ­” he paid that much deference to Mr. Byrd’s air and manner, “who I was told might lend me a helping hand in this Clemmens affair.  I didn’t recognize you before, sir.  Wouldn’t have stood in your way if I had.  Though, to be sure, I did want to see this matter through myself.  I thought I had the right.  And I’ve done it, too, as you must acknowledge, if you have been present in this terrible place very long.”

This self-satisfied, if not boastful, allusion to a scene in which this strange being had played so unworthy, if not unjustifiable, a part, sent a thrill of revulsion through Mr. Byrd.  Drawing hastily back with an instinct of dislike he could not conceal, he cast a glance through the thicket of trees that spread beyond the open door, and pointedly asked: 

“Was there no way of satisfying yourself of the guilt of Craik Mansell, except by enacting a farce that may lead to the life-long remorse of the woman out of whose love you have made a trap?”

A slow flush, the first, possibly, that had visited the hardy cheek of this thick-skinned detective for years, crept over the face of Frank Hickory.

“I don’t mean she shall ever know,” he sullenly protested, kicking at the block upon which he had been sitting.  “But it was a mean trick,” he frankly enough admitted the next moment.  “If I hadn’t been the tough old hickory knot that I am, I couldn’t have done it, I suppose.  The storm, too, made it seem a bit trifling.  But ­ Well, well!” he suddenly interjected, in a more cheerful tone, “’tis too late now for tears and repentance.  The thing is done, and can’t be undone.  And, at all events, I reckon we are both satisfied now as to who killed Widow Clemmens!”

Mr. Byrd could not resist a slight sarcasm.  “I thought you were satisfied in that regard before?” said he.  “At least, I understood that at a certain time you were very positive it was Mr. Hildreth.”

“So I was,” the fellow good-naturedly allowed; “so I was.  The byways of a crime like this are dreadful dark and uncertain.  It isn’t strange that a fellow gets lost sometimes.  But I got a jog on my elbow that sent me into the right path,” said he, “as, perhaps, you did too, sir, eh?”

Not replying to this latter insinuation, Mr. Byrd quietly repeated: 

“You got a jog on your elbow?  When, may I ask?”

“Three days ago, just!” was the emphatic reply.

“And from whom?”

Instead of replying, the man leaned back against the wall of the hut and looked at his interlocutor in silence.

“Are we going to join hands over this business?” he cried, at last, “or are you thinking of pushing your way on alone after you have got from me all that I know?”

The question took Mr. Byrd by surprise.

He had not thought of the future.  He was as yet too much disturbed by his memories of the past.  To hide his discomfiture, he began to pace the floor, an operation which his thoroughly wet condition certainly made advisable.

“I have no wish to rob you of any glory you may hope to reap from the success of the plot you have carried on here to-day,” he presently declared, with some bitterness; “but if this Craik Mansell is guilty, I suppose it is my duty to help you in the collection of all suitable and proper evidence against him.”

“Then,” said the other, who had been watching him with rather an anxious eye, “let us to work.”  And, sitting down on the table, he motioned to Mr. Byrd to take a seat upon the block at his side.

But the latter kept up his walk.

Hickory surveyed him for a moment in silence, then he said: 

“You must have something against this young man, or you wouldn’t be here.  What is it?  What first set you thinking about Craik Mansell?”

Now, this was a question Mr. Byrd could not and would not answer.  After what had just passed in the hut, he felt it impossible to mention to this man the name of Imogene Dare in connection with that of the nephew of Mrs. Clemmens.  He therefore waived the other’s interrogation and remarked: 

“My knowledge was rather the fruit of surmise than fact.  I did not believe in the guilt of Gouverneur Hildreth, and so was forced to look about me for some one whom I could conscientiously suspect.  I fixed upon this unhappy man in Buffalo; how truly, your own suspicions, unfortunately, reveal.”

“And I had to have my wits started by a horrid old woman,” murmured the evidently abashed Hickory.

“Horrid old woman!” repeated Mr. Byrd.  “Not Sally Perkins?”

“Yes.  A sweet one, isn’t she?”

Mr. Byrd shuddered.

“Tell me about it,” said he, coming and sitting down in the seat the other had previously indicated to him.

“I will, sir; I will:  but first let’s look at the weather.  Some folks would think it just as well for you to change that toggery of yours.  What do you say to going home first, and talking afterward?”

“I suppose it would be wise,” admitted Mr. Byrd, looking down at his garments, whose decidedly damp condition he had scarcely noticed in his excitement.  “And yet I hate to leave this spot till I learn how you came to choose it as the scene of the tragi-comedy you have enacted here to-day, and what position it is likely to occupy in the testimony which you have collected against this young man.”

“Wait, then,” said the bustling fellow, “till I build you the least bit of a fire to warm you.  It won’t take but a minute,” he averred, piling together some old sticks that cumbered the hearth, and straightway setting a match to them.  “See! isn’t that pleasant?  And now, just cast your eye at this!” he continued, drawing a comfortable-looking flask out of his pocket and handing it over to the other with a dry laugh.  “Isn’t this pleasant?” And he threw himself down on the floor and stretched out his hands to the blaze, with a gusto which the dreary hour he had undoubtedly passed made perfectly natural, if not excusable.

“I thank you,” said Mr. Byrd; “I didn’t know I was so chilled,” and he, too, enjoyed the warmth.  “And, now,” he pursued, after a moment, “go on; let us have the thing out at once.”

But the other was in no hurry.  “Very good, sir,” he cried; “but, first, if you don’t mind, suppose you tell me what brought you to this hut to-day?”

“I was on the look-out for clues.  In my study of the situation, I decided that the murderer of Mrs. Clemmens escaped, not from the front, but from the back, of the house.  Taking the path I imagined him to have trod, I came upon this hut.  It naturally attracted my attention, and to-day I came back to examine it more closely in the hope of picking up some signs of his having been here, or at least of having passed through the glade on his way to the deeper woods.”

“And what, if you had succeeded in this, sir?  What, if some token of his presence had rewarded your search?”

“I should have completed a chain of proof of which only this one link is lacking.  I could have shown how Craik Mansell fled from this place on last Tuesday afternoon, making his way through the woods to the highway, and thence to the Quarry Station at Monteith, where he took the train which carried him back to Buffalo.”

“You could! ­show me how?”

Mr. Byrd explained himself more definitely.

Hickory at once rose.

“I guess we can give you the link,” he dryly remarked.  “At all events, suppose you just step here and tell me what conclusion you draw from the appearance of this pile of brush.”

Mr. Byrd advanced and looked at a small heap of hemlock that lay in a compact mass in one corner.

“I have not disturbed it,” pursued the other.  “It is just as it was when I found it.”

“Looks like a pillow,” declared Mr. Byrd.  “Has been used for such, I am sure; for see, the dust in this portion of the floor lies lighter than elsewhere.  You can almost detect the outline of a man’s recumbent form,” he went on, slowly, leaning down to examine the floor more closely.  “As for the boughs, they have been cut from the tree with a knife, and ­” Lifting up a sprig, he looked at it, then passed it over to Hickory, with a meaning glance that directed attention to one or two short hairs of a dark brown color, that were caught in the rough bark.  “He did not even throw his pocket-handkerchief over the heap before lying down,” he observed.

Mr. Hickory smiled.  “You’re up in your business, I see.”  And drawing his new colleague to the table, he asked him what he saw there.

At first sight Mr. Byrd exclaimed:  “Nothing,” but in another moment he picked up an infinitesimal chip from between the rough logs that formed the top of this somewhat rustic piece of furniture, and turning it over in his hand, pronounced it to be a piece of wood from a lead-pencil.

“Here are several of them,” remarked Mr. Hickory, “and what is more, it is easy to tell just the color of the pencil from which they were cut.  It was blue.”

“That is so,” assented Mr. Byrd.

“Quarrymen, charcoal-burners, and the like are not much in the habit of sharpening pencils,” suggested Hickory.

“Is the pencil now to be found in the pocket of Mr. Mansell a blue one?”

“It is.”

“Have you any thing more to show me?” asked Mr. Byrd.

“Only this,” responded the other, taking out of his pocket the torn-off corner of a newspaper.  “I found this blowing about under the bushes out there,” said he.  “Look at it and tell me from what paper it was torn.”

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Byrd; “none that I am acquainted with.”

“You don’t read the Buffalo Courier?”

“Oh, is this ­”

“A corner from the Buffalo Courier?  I don’t know, but I mean to find out.  If it is, and the date proves to be correct, we won’t have much trouble about the little link, will we?”

Mr. Byrd shook his head and they again crouched down over the fire.

“And, now, what did you learn in Buffalo?” inquired the persistent Hickory.

“Not much,” acknowledged Mr. Byrd.  “The man Brown was entirely too ubiquitous to give me my full chance.  Neither at the house nor at the mill was I able to glean any thing beyond an admission from the landlady that Mr. Mansell was not at home at the time of his aunt’s murder.  I couldn’t even learn where he was on that day, or where he had ostensibly gone?  If it had not been for the little girl of Mr. Goodman ­”

“Ah, I had not time to go to that house,” interjected the other, suggestively.

“I should have come home as wise as I went,” continued Mr. Byrd.  “She told me that on the day before Mr. Mansell returned, he wrote to her father from Monteith, and that settled my mind in regard to him.  It was pure luck, however.”

The other laughed long and loud.

“I didn’t know I did it up so well,” he cried.  “I told the landlady you were a detective, or acted like one, and she was very ready to take the alarm, having, as I judge, a motherly liking for her young boarder.  Then I took Messrs. Chamberlin and Harrison into my confidence, and having got from them all the information they could give me, told them there was evidently another man on the track of this Mansell, and warned them to keep silence till they heard from the prosecuting attorney in Sibley.  But I didn’t know who you were, or, at least, I wasn’t sure; or, as I said before, I shouldn’t have presumed.”

The short, dry laugh with which he ended this explanation had not ceased, when Mr. Byrd observed: 

“You have not told me what you gathered in Buffalo.”

“Much,” quoth Hickory, reverting to his favorite laconic mode of speech.  “First, that Mansell went from home on Monday, the day before the murder, for the purpose, as he said, of seeing a man in New York about his wonderful invention.  Secondly, that he never went to New York, but came back the next evening, bringing his model with him, and looking terribly used up and worried.  Thirdly, that to get this invention before the public had been his pet aim and effort for a whole year.  That he believed in it as you do in your Bible, and would have given his heart’s blood, if it would have done any good, to start the thing, and prove himself right in his estimate of its value.  That the money to do this was all that was lacking, no one believing in him sufficiently to advance him the five thousand dollars considered necessary to build the machine and get it in working order.  That, in short, he was a fanatic on the subject, and often said he would be willing to die within the year if he could first prove to the unbelieving capitalists whom he had vainly importuned for assistance, the worth of the discovery he believed himself to have made.  Fourthly ­but what is it you wish to say, sir?”

“Five thousand dollars is just the amount Widow Clemmens is supposed to leave him,” remarked Mr. Byrd.

“Precisely,” was the short reply.

“And fourthly?” suggested the former.

“Fourthly, he was in the mill on Wednesday morning, where he went about his work as usual, until some one who knew his relation to Mrs. Clemmens looked up from the paper he was reading, and, in pure thoughtlessness, cried, ‘So they have killed your aunt for you, have they?’ A barbarous jest, that caused everybody near him to start in indignation, but which made him recoil as if one of these thunderbolts we have been listening to this afternoon had fallen at his feet.  And he didn’t get over it,” Hickory went on.  “He had to beg permission to go home.  He said the terrible news had made him ill, and indeed he looked sick enough, and continued to look sick enough for days.  He had letters from Sibley, and an invitation to attend the inquest and be present at the funeral services, but he refused to go.  He was threatened with diphtheria, he declared, and remained away from the mill until the day before yesterday.  Some one, I don’t remember who, says he went out of town the very Wednesday he first heard the news; but if so, he could not have been gone long, for he was at home Wednesday night, sick in bed, and threatened, as I have said, with the diphtheria.  Fifthly ­”

“Well, fifthly?”

“I am afraid of your criticisms,” laughed the rough detective.  “Fifthly is the result of my poking about among Mr. Mansell’s traps.”

“Ah!” frowned the other, with a vivid remembrance of that picture of Miss Dare, with its beauty blotted out by the ominous black lines.

“You are too squeamish for a detective,” the other declared.  “Guess you’re kept for the fancy business, eh?”

The look Mr. Byrd gave him was eloquent.  “Go on,” said he; “let us hear what lies behind your fifthly.”

“Love,” returned the man.  “Locked in the drawer of this young gentleman’s table, I found some half-dozen letters tied with a black ribbon.  I knew they were written by a lady, but squeamishness is not a fault of mine, and so I just allowed myself to glance over them.  They were from Miss Dare, of course, and they revealed the fact that love, as well as ambition, had been a motive power in determining this Mansell to make a success out of his invention.”

Leaning back, the now self-satisfied detective looked at Mr. Byrd.

“The name of Miss Dare,” he went on, “brings me to the point from which we started.  I haven’t yet told you what old Sally Perkins had to say to me.”

“No,” rejoined Mr. Byrd.

“Well,” continued the other, poking with his foot the dying embers of the fire, till it started up into a fresh blaze, “the case against this young fellow wouldn’t be worth very much without that old crone’s testimony, I reckon; but with it I guess we can get along.”

“Let us hear,” said Mr. Byrd.

“The old woman is a wretch,” Hickory suddenly broke out.  “She seems to gloat over the fact that a young and beautiful woman is in trouble.  She actually trembled with eagerness as she told her story.  If I hadn’t been rather anxious myself to hear what she had to say, I could have thrown her out of the window.  As it was, I let her go on; duty before pleasure, you see ­duty before pleasure.”

“But her story,” persisted Mr. Byrd, letting some of his secret irritation betray itself.

“Well, her story was this:  Monday afternoon, the day before the murder, you know, she was up in these very woods hunting for witch-hazel.  She had got her arms full and was going home across the bog when she suddenly heard voices.  Being of a curious disposition, like myself, I suppose, she stopped, and seeing just before her a young gentleman and lady sitting on an old stump, crouched down in the shadow of a tree, with the harmless intent, no doubt, of amusing herself with their conversation.  It was more interesting than she expected, and she really became quite tragic as she related her story to me.  I cannot do justice to it myself, and I sha’n’t try.  It is enough that the man whom she did not know, and the woman whom she immediately recognized as Miss Dare, were both in a state of great indignation.  That he spoke of selfishness and obstinacy on the part of his aunt, and that she, in the place of rebuking him, replied in a way to increase his bitterness, and lead him finally to exclaim:  ’I cannot bear it!  To think that with just the advance of the very sum she proposes to give me some day, I could make her fortune and my own, and win you all in one breath!  It is enough to drive a man mad to see all that he craves in this world so near his grasp, and yet have nothing, not even hope, to comfort him.’  And at that, it seems, they both rose, and she, who had not answered any thing to this, struck the tree before which they stood, with her bare fist, and murmured a word or so which the old woman couldn’t catch, but which was evidently something to the effect that she wished she knew Mrs. Clemmens; for Mansell ­of course it was he ­said, in almost the same breath, ‘And if you did know her, what then?’ A question which elicited no reply at first, but which finally led her to say:  ’Oh!  I think that, possibly, I might be able to persuade her.’  All this,” the detective went on, “old Sally related with the greatest force; but in regard to what followed, she was not so clear.  Probably they interrupted their conversation with some lovers’ by-play, for they stood very near together, and he seemed to be earnestly pleading with her.  ‘Do take it,’ old Sally heard him say.  ’I shall feel as if life held some outlook for me, if you only will gratify me in this respect.’  But she answered:  ’No; it is of no use.  I am as ambitious as you are, and fate is evidently against us,’ and put his hand back when he endeavored to take hers, but finally yielded so far as to give it to him for a moment, though she immediately snatched it away again, crying:  ’I cannot; you must wait till to-morrow.’  And when he asked:  ‘Why to-morrow?’ she answered:  ’A night has been known to change the whole current of a person’s affairs.’  To which he replied:  ‘True,’ and looked thoughtful, very thoughtful, as he met her eyes and saw her raise that white hand of hers and strike the tree again with a passionate force that made her fingers bleed.  And she was right,” concluded the speaker.  “The night, or if not the night, the next twenty-four hours, did make a change, as even old Sally Perkins observed.  Widow Clemmens was struck down and Craik Mansell became the possessor of the five thousand dollars he so much wanted in order to win for himself a fortune and a bride.”

Mr. Byrd, who had been sitting with his face turned aside during this long recital, slowly rose to his feet.  “Hickory,” said he, and his tone had an edge of suppressed feeling in it that made the other start, “don’t let me ever hear you say, in my presence, that you think this young and beautiful woman was the one to suggest murder to this man, for I won’t hear it.  And now,” he continued, more calmly, “tell me why this babbling old wretch did not enliven the inquest with her wonderful tale.  It would have been a fine offset to the testimony of Miss Firman.”

“She said she wasn’t fond of coroners and had no wish to draw the attention of twelve of her own townsfolk upon herself.  She didn’t mean to commit herself with me,” pursued Hickory, rising also.  “She was going to give me a hint of the real state of affairs; or, rather, set me working in the right direction, as this little note which she tucked under the door of my room at the hotel will show.  But I was too quick for her, and had her by the arm before she could shuffle down the stairs.  It was partly to prove her story was true and not a romance made up for the occasion, that I lured this woman here this afternoon.”

“You are not as bad a fellow as I thought,” Mr. Byrd admitted, after a momentary contemplation of the other’s face.  “If I might only know how you managed to effect this interview.”

“Nothing easier.  I found in looking over the scraps of paper which Mansell had thrown into the waste-paper basket in Buffalo, the draft of a note which he had written to Miss Dare, under an impulse which he afterward probably regretted.  It was a summons to their usual place of tryst at or near this hut, and though unsigned, was of a character, as I thought, to effect its purpose.  I just sent it to her, that’s all.”

The nonchalance with which this was said completed Mr. Byrd’s astonishment.

“You are a worthy disciple of Gryce,” he asserted, leading the way to the door.

“Think so?” exclaimed the man, evidently flattered at what he considered a great compliment.  “Then shake hands,” he cried, with a frank appeal Mr. Byrd found it hard to resist.  “Ah, you don’t want to,” he somewhat ruefully declared.  “Will it change your feelings any if I promise to ignore what happened here to-day ­my trick with Miss Dare and what she revealed and all that?  If it will, I swear I won’t even think of it any more if I can help it.  At all events, I won’t tattle about it even to the superintendent.  It shall be a secret between you and me, and she won’t know but what it was her lover she talked to, after all.”

“You are willing to do all this?” inquired Mr. Byrd.

“Willing and ready,” cried the man.  “I believe in duty to one’s superiors, but duty doesn’t always demand of one to tell every thing he knows.  Besides, it won’t be necessary, I imagine.  There is enough against this poor fellow without that.”

“I fear so,” ejaculated Mr. Byrd.

“Then it is a bargain?” said Hickory.

“Yes.”

And Mr. Byrd held out his hand.

The rain had now ceased and they prepared to return home.  Before leaving the glade, however, Mr. Byrd ran his eye over the other’s person and apparel, and in some wonder inquired: 

“How do you fellows ever manage to get up such complete disguises?  I declare you look enough like Mr. Mansell in the back to make me doubt even now who I am talking to.”

“Oh,” laughed the other, “it is easy enough.  It’s my specialty, you see, and one in which I am thought to excel.  But, to tell the truth, I hadn’t much to contend with in this case.  In build I am famously like this man, as you must have noticed when you saw us together in Buffalo.  Indeed, it was our similarity in this respect that first put the idea of personifying him into my head.  My complexion had been darkened already, and, as for such accessories as hair, voice, manner, dress, etc., a five-minutes’ study of my model was sufficient to prime me up in all that ­enough, at least, to satisfy the conditions of an interview which did not require me to show my face.”

“But you did not know when you came here that you would not have to show your face,” persisted Mr. Byrd, anxious to understand how this man dared risk his reputation on an undertaking of this kind.

“No, and I did not know that the biggest thunderstorm of the season was going to spring up and lend me its darkness to complete the illusion I had attempted.  I only trusted my good fortune ­and my wits,” he added, with a droll demureness.  “Both had served me before, and both were likely to serve me again.  And, say she had detected me in my little game, what then?  Women like her don’t babble.”

There was no reply to make to this, and Mr. Byrd’s thoughts being thus carried back to Imogene Dare and the unhappy revelations she had been led to make, he walked on in a dreary silence his companion had sufficient discretion not to break.

CHAPTER VIII- MR. FERRIS.

          Which of you have done this? ­MACBETH.

          What have we here? ­TEMPEST.

MR. FERRIS sat in his office in a somewhat gloomy frame of mind.  There had been bad news from the jail that morning.  Mr. Hildreth had attempted suicide the night before, and was now lying in a critical condition at the hospital.

Mr. Ferris himself had never doubted this man’s guilt.  From Hildreth’s first appearance at the inquest, the District Attorney had fixed upon him as the murderer of Mrs. Clemmens, and up to this time he had seen no good and substantial reason for altering his opinion.

Even the doubts expressed by Mr. Byrd had moved him but little.  Mr. Byrd was an enthusiast, and, naturally enough, shrank from believing a gentleman capable of such a crime.  But the other detective’s judgment was unswayed, and he considered Hildreth guilty.  It was not astonishing, then, that the opinion of Mr. Ferris should coincide with that of the older and more experienced man.

But the depth of despair or remorse which had led Mr. Hildreth to this desperate attempt upon his own life had struck the District Attorney with dismay.  Though not over-sensitive by nature, he could not help feeling sympathy for the misery that had prompted such a deed, and while secretly regarding this unsuccessful attempt at suicide as an additional proof of guilt, he could not forbear satisfying himself by a review of the evidence elicited at the inquest, that the action of the authorities in arresting this man had been both warrantable and necessary.

The result was satisfactory in all but one point.  When he came to the widow’s written accusation against one by the name of Gouverneur Hildreth, he was impressed by a fact that had hitherto escaped his notice.  This was the yellowness of the paper upon which the words were written.  If they had been transcribed a dozen years before, they would not have looked older, nor would the ink have presented a more faded appearance.  Now, as the suspected man was under twenty-five years of age, and must, therefore, have been a mere child when the paper was drawn up, the probability was that the Gouverneur intended was the prisoner’s father, their names being identical.

But this discovery, while it robbed the affair of its most dramatic feature, could not affect in any serious way the extreme significance of the remaining real and compromising facts which told so heavily against this unfortunate man.  Indeed, the well-known baseness of the father made it easier to distrust the son, and Mr. Ferris had just come to the conclusion that his duty compelled him to draw up an indictment of the would-be suicide, when the door opened, and Mr. Byrd and Mr. Hickory came in.

To see these two men in conjunction was a surprise to the District Attorney.  He, however, had no time to express himself on the subject, for Mr. Byrd, stepping forward, immediately remarked: 

“Mr. Hickory and I have been in consultation, sir; and we have a few facts to give you that we think will alter your opinion as to the person who murdered Mrs. Clemmens.”

“Is this so?” cried Mr. Ferris, looking at Hickory with a glance indicative of doubt.

“Yes, sir,” exclaimed that not easily abashed individual, with an emphasis decided enough to show the state of his feelings on the subject.  “After I last saw you a woman came in my way and put into my hands so fresh and promising a clue, that I dropped the old scent at once and made instanter for the new game.  But I soon found I was not the only sportsman on this trail.  Before I had taken a dozen steps I ran upon this gentleman, and, finding him true grit, struck up a partnership with him that has led to our bringing down the quarry together.”

“Humph!” quoth the District Attorney.  “Some very remarkable discoveries must have come to light to influence the judgment of two such men as yourselves.”

“You are right,” rejoined Mr. Byrd.  “In fact, I should not be surprised if this case proved to be one of the most remarkable on record.  It is not often that equally convincing evidence of guilt is found against two men having no apparent connection.”

“And have you collected such evidence?”

“We have.”

“And who is the person you consider equally open to suspicion with Mr. Hildreth?”

“Craik Mansell, Mrs. Clemmens’ nephew.”

The surprise of the District-Attorney was, as Mr. Hickory in later days remarked, nuts to him.  The solemn nature of the business he was engaged upon never disturbed this hardy detective’s sense of the ludicrous, and he indulged in one of his deepest chuckles as he met the eye of Mr. Ferris.

“One never knows what they are going to run upon in a chase of this kind, do they, sir?” he remarked, with the greatest cheerfulness.  “Mr. Mansell is no more of a gentleman than Mr. Hildreth; yet, because he is the second one of his caste who has attracted our attention, you are naturally very much surprised.  But wait till you hear what we have to tell you.  I am confident you will be satisfied with our reasons for suspecting this new party.”  And he glanced at Mr. Byrd, who, seeing no cause for delay, proceeded to unfold before the District Attorney the evidence they had collected against Mr. Mansell.

It was strong, telling, and seemingly conclusive, as we already know; and awoke in the mind of Mr. Ferris the greatest perplexity of his life.  It was not simply that the facts urged against Mr. Mansell were of the same circumstantial character and of almost the same significance as those already urged against Mr. Hildreth, but that the association of Miss Dare’s name with this new theory of suspicion presented difficulties, if it did not involve consequences, calculated to make any friend of Mr. Orcutt quail.  And Mr. Ferris was such a friend, and knew very well the violent nature of the shock which this eminent lawyer would experience at discovering the relations held by this trusted woman toward a man suspected of crime.

Then Miss Dare herself!  Was this beautiful and cherished woman, hitherto believed by all who knew her to be set high above the reach of reproach, to be dragged down from her pedestal and submitted to the curiosity of the rabble, if not to its insinuations and reproach?  It seemed hard; even to this stern, dry searcher among dead men’s bones, it seemed both hard and bitter.  And yet, because he was an honest man, he had no thought of paltering with his duty.  He could only take time to make sure what that duty was.  He accordingly refrained from expressing any opinion in regard to Mr. Mansell’s culpability to the two detectives, and finally dismissed them without any special orders.

But a day or two after this he sent for them again, and said: 

“Since I have seen you I have considered, with due carefulness, the various facts presented me in support of your belief that Craik Mansell is the man who assailed the Widow Clemmens, and have weighed them against the equally significant facts pointing toward Mr. Hildreth as the guilty party, and find but one link lacking in the former chain of evidence which is not lacking in the latter; and that is this:  Mrs. Clemmens, in the one or two lucid moments which returned to her after the assault, gave utterance to an exclamation which many think was meant to serve as a guide in determining the person of her murderer.  She said, ‘Ring,’ as Mr. Byrd here will doubtless remember, and then ‘Hand,’ as if she wished to fix upon the minds of those about her that the hand uplifted against her wore a ring.  At all events, such a conclusion is plausible enough, and led to my making an experiment yesterday, which has, for ever, set the matter at rest in my own mind.  I took my stand at the huge clock in her house, just in the attitude she was supposed to occupy when struck, and, while in this position, ordered my clerk to advance upon me from behind with his hands clasped about a stick of wood, which he was to bring down within an inch of my head.  This was done, and while his arm was in the act of descending, I looked to see if by a quick glance from the corner of my eye I could detect the broad seal ring I had previously pushed upon his little finger.  I discovered that I could; that indeed it was all of the man which I could distinctly see without turning my head completely around.  The ring, then, is an important feature in this case, a link without which any chain of evidence forged for the express purpose of connecting a man with this murder must necessarily remain incomplete and consequently useless.  But amongst the suspicious circumstances brought to bear against Mr. Mansell, I discern no token of a connection between him and any such article, while we all know that Mr. Hildreth not only wore a ring on the day of the murder, but considered the circumstance so much in his own disfavor, that he slipped it off his finger when he began to see the shadow of suspicion falling upon him.”

“You have, then, forgotten the diamond I picked up from the floor of Mrs. Clemmens’ dining-room on the morning of the murder?” suggested Mr. Byrd with great reluctance.

“No,” answered the District Attorney, shortly.  “But Miss Dare distinctly avowed that ring to be hers, and you have brought me no evidence as yet to prove her statement false.  If you can supply such proof, or if you can show that Mr. Mansell had that ring on his hand when he entered Mrs. Clemmens’ house on the fatal morning ­another fact, which, by-the-way, rests as yet upon inference only ­I shall consider the case against him as strong as that against Mr. Hildreth; otherwise, not.”

Mr. Byrd, with the vivid remembrance before him of Miss Dare’s looks and actions in the scene he had witnessed between her and the supposed Mansell in the hut, smiled with secret bitterness over this attempt of the District Attorney to shut his eyes to the evident guiltiness of this man.

Mr. Ferris saw this smile and instantly became irritated.

“I do not doubt any more than yourself,” he resumed, in a changed voice, “that this young man allowed his mind to dwell upon the possible advantages which might accrue to himself if his aunt should die.  He may even have gone so far as to meditate the commission of a crime to insure these advantages.  But whether the crime which did indeed take place the next day in his aunt’s house was the result of his meditations, or whether he found his own purpose forestalled by an attack made by another person possessing no less interest than himself in seeing this woman dead, is not determined by the evidence you bring.”

“Then you do not favor his arrest?” inquired Mr. Byrd.

“No.  The vigorous measures which were taken in Mr. Hildreth’s case, and the unfortunate event to which they have led, are terrible enough to satisfy the public craving after excitement for a week at least.  I am not fond of driving men to madness myself, and unless I can be made to see that my duty demands a complete transferal of my suspicions from Hildreth to Mansell, I can advise nothing more than a close but secret surveillance of the latter’s movements until the action of the Grand Jury determines whether the evidence against Mr. Hildreth is sufficient to hold him for trial.”

Mr. Byrd, who had such solid, if private and uncommunicable, reasons for believing in the guilt of Craik Mansell, was somewhat taken aback at this unlooked-for decision of Mr. Ferris, and, remembering the temptation which a man like Hickory must feel to make his cause good at all hazards, cast a sharp look toward that blunt-spoken detective, in some doubt as to whether he could be relied upon to keep his promise in the face of this manifest disappointment.

But Hickory had given his word, and Hickory remained firm; and Mr. Byrd, somewhat relieved in his own mind, was about to utter his acquiescence in the District Attorney’s views, when a momentary interruption occurred, which gave him an opportunity to exchange a few words aside with his colleague.

“Hickory,” he whispered, “what do you think of this objection which Mr. Ferris makes?”

“I?” was the hurried reply.  “Oh, I think there is something in it.”

“Something in it?”

“Yes.  Mr. Mansell is the last man to wear a ring, I must acknowledge.  Indeed, I took some pains while in Buffalo to find out if he ever indulged in any such vanity, and was told decidedly No.  As to the diamond you mentioned, that is certainly entirely too rich a jewel for a man like him to possess.  I ­I am a afraid the absence of this link in our chain of evidence is fatal.  I shouldn’t wonder if the old scent was the best, after all.”

“But Miss Dare ­her feelings and her convictions, as manifested by the words she made use of in the hut?” objected Mr. Byrd.

“Oh! she thinks he is guilty, of course!”

She thinks!  Mr. Byrd stared at his companion for a minute in silence. She thinks!  Then there was a possibility, it seems, that it was only her thought, and that Mr. Mansell was not really the culpable man he had been brought to consider him.

But here an exclamation, uttered by Mr. Ferris, called their attention back to that gentleman.  He was reading a letter which had evidently been just brought in, and his expression was one of amazement, mixed with doubt.  As they looked toward him they met his eye, that had a troubled and somewhat abashed expression, which convinced them that the communication he held in his hand was in some way connected with the matter under consideration.

Surprised themselves, they unconsciously started forward, when, in a dry and not altogether pleased tone, the District Attorney observed: 

“This affair seems to be full of coincidences.  You talk of a missing link, and it is immediately thrust under your nose.  Read that!”

And he pushed toward them the following epistle, roughly scrawled on a sheet of common writing-paper: 

If Mr. Ferris is anxious for justice, and can believe that suspicion does not always attach itself to the guilty, let him, or some one whose business it is, inquire of Miss Imogene Dare, of this town, how she came to claim as her own the ring that was picked up on the floor of Mrs. Clemmens’ house.

“Well!” cried Mr. Byrd, glancing at Hickory, “what are we to think of this?”

“Looks like the work of old Sally Perkins,” observed the other, pointing out the lack of date and signature.

“So it does,” acquiesced Mr. Byrd, in a relieved tone.  “The miserable old wretch is growing impatient.”

But Mr. Ferris, with a gloomy frown, shortly said: 

“The language is not that of an ignorant old creature like Sally Perkins, whatever the writing may be.  Besides, how could she have known about the ring?  The persons who were present at the time it was picked up are not of the gossiping order.”

“Who, then, do you think wrote this?” inquired Mr. Byrd.

“That is what I wish you to find out,” declared the District Attorney.

Mr. Hickory at once took it in his hand.

“Wait,” said he, “I have an idea.”  And he carried the letter to one side, where he stood examining it for several minutes.  When he came back he looked tolerably excited and somewhat pleased.  “I believe I can tell you who wrote it,” said he.

“Who?” inquired the District Attorney.

For reply the detective placed his finger upon a name that was written in the letter.

“Imogene Dare?” exclaimed Mr. Ferris, astonished.

“She herself,” proclaimed the self-satisfied detective.

“What makes you think that?” the District Attorney slowly asked.

“Because I have seen her writing, and studied her signature, and, ably as she has disguised her hand in the rest of the letter, it betrays itself in her name.  See here.”  And Hickory took from his pocket-book a small slip of paper containing her autograph, and submitted it to the test of comparison.

The similarity between the two signatures was evident, and both Mr. Byrd and Mr. Ferris were obliged to allow the detective might be right, though the admission opened up suggestions of the most formidable character.

“It is a turn for which I am not prepared,” declared the District Attorney.

“It is a turn for which we are not prepared,” repeated Mr. Byrd, with a controlling look at Hickory.

“Let us, then, defer further consideration of the matter till I have had an opportunity to see Miss Dare,” suggested Mr. Ferris.

And the two detectives were very glad to acquiesce in this, for they were as much astonished as he at this action of Miss Dare, though, with their better knowledge of her feelings, they found it comparatively easy to understand how her remorse and the great anxiety she doubtless felt for Mr. Hildreth had sufficed to drive her to such an extreme and desperate measure.

CHAPTER IX - A CRISIS.

Queen. Alas, how is it with you? 
That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
And with the incorporeal air do hold discourse?

Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
Starts up and stands on end.

Whereon do you look?

Hamlet. On him!  On him!  Look you how pale he glares! 
His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones,
Would make them capable.  Do not look upon me;
Lest, with this piteous action, you convert
My stern effects! then what I have to do
Will want true color; tears, perchance, for blood. ­HAMLET.

THAT my readers may understand even better than Byrd and Hickory how it was that Imogene came to write this letter, I must ask them to consider certain incidents that had occurred in a quarter far removed from the eye of the detectives.

Mr. Orcutt’s mind had never been at rest concerning the peculiar attitude assumed by Imogene Dare at the time of Mrs. Clemmens’ murder.  Time and thought had not made it any more possible for him to believe now than then that she knew any thing of the matter beyond what appeared to the general eye:  but he could not forget the ring.  It haunted him.  Fifty times a day he asked himself what she had meant by claiming as her own a jewel which had been picked up from the floor of a strange house at a time so dreadful, and which, in despite of her explanations to him, he found it impossible to believe was hers or ever could have been hers?  He was even tempted to ask her; but he never did.  The words would not come.  Though they faltered again and again upon his lips, he could not give utterance to them; no, though with every passing day he felt that the bond uniting her to him was growing weaker and weaker, and that if something did not soon intervene to establish confidence between them, he would presently lose all hope of the treasure for the possession of which he was now ready to barter away half the remaining years of his life.

Her increasing reticence, and the almost stony look of misery that now confronted him without let or hindrance from her wide gray eyes, were not calculated to reassure him or make his future prospects look any brighter.  Her pain, if pain it were, or remorse, if remorse it could be, was not of a kind to feel the influence of time; and, struck with dismay, alarmed in spite of himself, if not for her reason at least for his own, he watched her from day to day, feeling that now he would give his life not merely to possess her, but to understand her and the secret that was gnawing at her heart.

At last there came a day when he could no longer restrain himself.  She had been seated in his presence, and had been handed a letter which for the moment seemed to thoroughly overwhelm her.  We know what that letter was.  It was the note which had been sent as a decoy by the detective Hickory, but which she had no reason to doubt was a real communication from Craik Mansell, despite the strange handwriting on the envelope.  It prayed her for an interview.  It set the time and mentioned the place of meeting, and created for the instant such a turmoil in her usually steady brain that she could not hide it from the searching eyes that watched her.

“What is it, Imogene?” inquired Mr. Orcutt, drawing near her with a gesture of such uncontrollable anxiety, it looked as if he were about to snatch the letter from her hand.

For reply she rose, walked to the grate, in which a low wood fire was burning, and plunged the paper in among the coals.  When it was all consumed she turned and faced Mr. Orcutt.

“You must excuse me,” she murmured; “but the letter was one which I absolutely desired no one to see.”

But he did not seem to hear her apology.  He stood with his gaze fixed on the fire, and his hand clenched against his heart, as if something in the fate of that wretched sheet of paper reminded him of the love and hope that were shrivelling up before his eyes.

She saw his look and drooped her head with a sudden low moan of mingled shame and suffering.

“Am I killing you?” she faintly cried.  “Are my strange, wild ways driving you to despair?  I had not thought of that.  I am so selfish, I had not thought of that!”

This evidence of feeling, the first she had ever shown him, moved Mr. Orcutt deeply.  Advancing toward her, with sudden passion, he took her by the hand.

“Killing me?” he repeated.  “Yes, you are killing me.  Don’t you see how fast I am growing old?  Don’t you see how the dust lies thick upon the books that used to be my solace and delight?  I do not understand you, Imogene.  I love you and I do not understand your grief, or what it is that is affecting you in this terrible way.  Tell me.  Let me know the nature of the forces with which I have to contend, and I can bear all the rest.”

This appeal, forced as it was from lips unused to prayer, seemed to strike her, absorbed though she was in her own suffering.  Looking at him with real concern, she tried to speak, but the words faltered on her tongue.  They came at last, however, and he heard her say: 

“I wish I could weep, if only to show you I am not utterly devoid of womanly sympathy for an anguish I cannot cure.  But the fountain of my tears is dried at its source.  I do not think I can ever weep again.  I am condemned to tread a path of misery and despair, and must traverse it to the end without weakness and without help.  Do not ask me why, for I can never tell you.  And do not detain me now, or try to make me talk, for I must go where I can be alone and silent.”

She was slipping away, but he caught her by the wrist and drew her back.  His pain and perplexity had reached their climax.

“You must speak,” he cried.  “I have paltered long enough with this matter.  You must tell me what it is that is destroying your happiness and mine.”

But her eyes, turning toward him, seemed to echo that must in a look of disdain eloquent enough to scorn all help from words, and in the indomitable determination of her whole aspect he saw that he might slay her, but that he could never make her speak.

Loosing her with a gesture of despair, he turned away.  When he glanced back again she was gone.

The result of this interview was naturally an increased doubt and anxiety on his part.  He could not attend to his duties with any degree of precision, he was so haunted by uneasy surmises as to what might have been the contents of the letter which he had thus seen her destroy before his eyes.  As for her words, they were like her conduct, an insolvable mystery, for which he had no key.

His failure to find her at home when he returned that night added to his alarm, especially as he remembered the vivid thunderstorm that had deluged the town in the afternoon.  Nor, though she came in very soon and offered both excuses and explanations for her absence, did he experience any appreciable relief, or feel at all satisfied that he was not threatened with some secret and terrible catastrophe.  Indeed, the air of vivid and feverish excitement which pervaded every look of hers from this time, making each morning and evening distinctive in his memory as a season of fresh fear and renewed suspense, was enough of itself to arouse this sense of an unknown, but surely approaching, danger.  He saw she was on the look out for some event, he knew not what, and studied the papers as sedulously as she, in the hope of coming upon some revelation that should lay bare the secret of this new condition of hers.  At last he thought he had found it.  Coming home one day from the court, he called her into his presence, and, without pause or preamble, exclaimed, with almost cruel abruptness: 

“An event of possible interest to you has just taken place.  The murderer of Mrs. Clemmens has just cut his throat.”

He saw before he had finished the first clause that he had struck at the very citadel of her terrors and her woe.  At the end of the second sentence he knew, beyond all doubt now, what it was she had been fearing, if not expecting.  Yet she said not a word, and by no movement betrayed that the steel had gone through and through her heart.

A demon ­the maddening demon of jealousy ­gripped him for the first time with relentless force.

“Ah, you have been looking for it?” he cried in a choked voice.  “You know this man, then ­knew him, perhaps, before the murder of Mrs. Clemmens; knew him, and ­and, perhaps, loved him?”

She did not reply.

He struck his forehead with his hand, as if the moment was perfectly intolerable to him.

“Answer,” he cried.  “Did you know Gouverneur Hildreth or not?”

“Gouverneur Hildreth?” Oh, the sharp surprise, the wailing anguish of her tone!  Mr. Orcutt stood amazed.  “It is not he who has made this attempt upon his life! ­not he!” she shrieked like one appalled.

Perhaps because all other expression or emotion failed him, Mr. Orcutt broke forth into a loud and harrowing laugh.  “And who else should it be?” he cried.  “What other man stands accused of having murdered Widow Clemmens?  You are mad, Imogene; you don’t know what you say or what you do.”

“Yes, I am mad,” she repeated ­“mad!” and leaned her forehead forward on the back of a high chair beside which she had been standing, and hid her face and struggled with herself for a moment, while the clock went on ticking, and the wretched surveyer of her sorrow stood looking at her bended head like a man who does not know whether it is he or she who is in the most danger of losing his reason.

At last a word struggled forth from between her clasped hands.

“When did it happen?” she gasped, without lifting her head.  “Tell me all about it.  I think I can understand.”

The noted lawyer smiled a bitter smile, and spoke for the first time, without pity and without mercy.

“He has been trying for some days to effect his death.  His arrest and the little prospect there is of his escaping trial seem to have maddened his gentlemanly brain.  Fire-arms were not procurable, neither was poison nor a rope, but a pewter plate is enough in the hands of a desperate man.  He broke one in two last night, and ­”

He paused, sick and horror-stricken.  Her face had risen upon him from the back of the chair, and was staring upon him like that of a Medusa.  Before that gaze the flesh crept on his bones and the breath of life refused to pass his lips.  Gazing at her with rising horror, he saw her stony lips slowly part.

“Don’t go on,” she whispered.  “I can see it all without the help of words.”  Then, in a tone that seemed to come from some far-off world of nightmare, she painfully gasped, “Is he dead?”

Mr. Orcutt was a man who, up to the last year, had never known what it was to experience a real and controlling emotion.  Life with him had meant success in public affairs, and a certain social pre-eminence that made his presence in any place the signal of admiring looks and respectful attentions.  But let no man think that, because his doom delays, it will never come.  Passions such as he had deprecated in others, and desires such as he had believed impossible to himself, had seized upon him with ungovernable power, and in this moment especially he felt himself yielding to their sway with no more power of resistance than a puppet experiences in the grasp of a whirlwind.  Meeting that terrible eye of hers, burning with an anxiety for a man he despised, and hearing that agonized question from lips whose touch he had never known, he experienced a sudden wild and almost demoniac temptation to hurl back the implacable “Yes” that he felt certain would strike her like a dead woman to the ground.  But the horrid impulse passed, and, with a quick remembrance of the claims of honor upon one bearing his name and owning his history, he controlled himself with a giant resolution, and merely dropping his eyes from an anguish he dared no longer confront, answered, quietly: 

“No; he has hurt himself severely and has disfigured his good looks for life, but he will not die; or so the physicians think.”

A long, deep, shuddering sigh swept through the room.

“Thank God!” came from her lips, and then all was quiet again.

He looked up in haste; he could not bear the silence.

“Imogene ­” he began, but instantly paused in surprise at the change which had taken place in her expression.  “What do you intend to do?” was his quick demand.  “You look as I have never seen you look before.”

“Do not ask me!” she returned.  “I have no words for what I am going to do.  What you must do is to see that Gouverneur Hildreth is released from prison.  He is not guilty, mind you; he never committed this crime of which he is suspected, and in the shame of which suspicion he has this day attempted his life.  If he is kept in the restraint which is so humiliating to him, and if he dies there, it will be murder ­do you hear? murder!  And he will die there if he is not released; I know his feelings only too well.”

“But, Imogene ­”

“Hush! don’t argue.  ’Tis a matter of life and death, I tell you.  He must be released!  I know,” she went on, hurriedly, “what it is you want to say.  You think you cannot do this; that the evidence is all against him; that he went to prison of his own free will and cannot hope for release till his guilt or innocence has been properly inquired into.  But I know you can effect his enlargement if you will.  You are a lawyer, and understand all the crooks and turns by which a man can sometimes be made to evade the grasp of justice.  Use your knowledge.  Avail yourself of your influence with the authorities, and I ­” she paused and gave him a long, long look.

He was at her side in an instant.

“You would ­what?” he cried, taking her hand in his and pressing it impulsively.

“I would grant you whatever you ask,” she murmured, in a weariful tone.

“Would you be my wife?” he passionately inquired.

“Yes,” was the choked reply; “if I did not die first.”

He caught her to his breast in rapture.  He knelt at her side and threw his arms about her waist.

“You shall not die,” he cried.  “You shall live and be happy.  Only marry me to-day.”

“Not till Gouverneur Hildreth be released,” she interposed, gently.

He started as if touched by a galvanic battery, and slowly rose up and coldly looked at her.

“Do you love him so madly you would sell yourself for his sake?” he sternly demanded.

With a quick gesture she threw back her head as though the indignant “No” that sprang to her lips would flash out whether she would or not.  But she restrained herself in time.

“I cannot answer,” she returned.

But he was master now ­master of this dominating spirit that had held him in check for so long a time, and he was not to be put off.

“You must answer,” he sternly commanded.  “I have the right to know the extent of your feeling for this man, and I will.  Do you love him, Imogene Dare?  Tell me, or I here swear that I will do nothing for him, either now or at a time when he may need my assistance more than you know.”

This threat, uttered as he uttered it, could have but one effect.  Turning aside, so that he should not see the shuddering revolt in her eyes, she mechanically whispered: 

“And what if I did?  Would it be so very strange?  Youth admires youth, Mr. Orcutt, and Mr. Hildreth is very handsome and very unfortunate.  Do not oblige me to say more.”

Mr. Orcutt, across whose face a dozen different emotions had flitted during the utterance of these few words, drew back till half the distance of the room lay between them.

“Nor do I wish to hear any more,” he rejoined, slowly.  “You have said enough, quite enough.  I understand now all the past ­all your terrors and all your secret doubts and unaccountable behavior.  The man you loved was in danger, and you did not know how to manage his release.  Well, well, I am sorry for you, Imogene.  I wish I could help you.  I love you passionately, and would make you my wife in face of your affection for this man if I could do for you what you request.  But it is impossible.  Never during the whole course of my career has a blot rested upon my integrity as a lawyer.  I am known as an honest man, and honest will I remain known to the last.  Besides, I could do nothing to effect his enlargement if I tried.  Nothing but the plainest proof that he is innocent, or that another man is guilty, would avail now to release him from the suspicion which his own admissions have aroused.”

“Then there is no hope?” was her slow and despairing reply.

“None at present, Imogene,” was his stern, almost as despairing, answer.

As Mr. Orcutt sat over his lonely hearth that evening, a servant brought to him the following letter: 

DEAR FRIEND, ­It is not fit that I should remain any longer under your roof.  I have a duty before me which separates me forever from the friendship and protection of honorable men and women.  No home but such as I can provide for myself by the work of my own hands shall henceforth shelter the disgraced head of Imogene Dare.  Her fate, whatever it may prove to be, she bears alone, and you, who have been so kind, shall never suffer from any association with one whose name must henceforth become the sport of the crowd, if not the execration of the virtuous.  If your generous heart rebels at this, choke it relentlessly down.  I shall be already gone when you read these lines, and nothing you could do or say would make me come back.  Good-by, and may Heaven grant you forgetfulness of one whose only return to your benefactions has been to make you suffer almost as much as she suffers herself.

As Mr. Orcutt read these last lines, District Attorney Ferris was unsealing the anonymous missive which has already been laid before my readers.

CHAPTER X - HEART’S MARTYRDOM.

          Oh that a man might know
          The end of this day’s business, ere it come;
          But it sufficeth that the day will end,
          And then the end is known! ­JULIUS Cæsar.

MR. FERRIS’ first impulse upon dismissing the detectives had been to carry the note he had received to Mr. Orcutt.  But a night’s careful consideration of the subject convinced him that the wisest course would be to follow the suggestions conveyed in the letter, and seek a direct interview with Imogene Dare.

It was not an agreeable task for him to undertake.  Miss Dare was a young lady whom he had always held in the highest esteem.  He had hoped to see her the wife of his friend, and would have given much from his own private stock of hope and happiness to have kept her name free from the contumely which any association with this dreadful crime must necessarily bring upon it.  But his position as prosecuting attorney of the county would not allow him to consult his feelings any further in a case of such serious import.  The condition of Mr. Hildreth was, to say the least, such as demanded the most impartial action on the part of the public officials, and if through any explanation of Miss Dare the one missing link in the chain of evidence against another could be supplied, it was certainly his duty to do all he could to insure it.

Accordingly at a favorable hour the next day, he made his appearance at Mr. Orcutt’s house, and learning that Miss Dare had gone to Professor Darling’s house for a few days, followed her to her new home and requested an interview.

She at once responded to his call.  Little did he think as she came into the parlor where he sat, and with even more than her usual calm self-possession glided down the length of that elegant apartment to his side, that she had just come from a small room on the top floor, where, in the position of a hired seamstress, she had been engaged in cutting out the wedding garments of one of the daughters of the house.

Her greeting was that of a person attempting to feign a surprise she did not feel.

“Ah,” said she, “Mr. Ferris!  This is an unexpected pleasure.”

But Mr. Ferris had no heart for courtesies.

“Miss Dare,” he began, without any of the preliminaries which might be expected of him, “I have come upon a disagreeable errand.  I have a favor to ask.  You are in the possession of a piece of information which it is highly necessary for me to share.”

“I?”

The surprise betrayed in this single word was no more than was to be expected from a lady thus addressed, neither did the face she turned so steadily toward him alter under his searching gaze.

“If I can tell you any thing that you wish to know,” she quietly declared, “I am certainly ready to do so, sir.”

Deceived by the steadiness of her tone and the straightforward look of her eyes, he proceeded, with a sudden releasement from his embarrassment, to say: 

“I shall have to recall to your mind a most painful incident.  You remember, on the morning when we met at Mrs. Clemmens’ house, claiming as your own a diamond ring which was picked up from the floor at your feet?”

“I do.”

“Miss Dare, was this ring really yours, or were you misled by its appearance into merely thinking it your property?  My excuse for asking this is that the ring, if not yours, is likely to become an important factor in the case to which the murder of this unfortunate woman has led.”

“Sir ­” The pause which followed the utterance of this one word was but momentary, but in it what faint and final hope may have gone down into the depths of everlasting darkness God only knows.  “Sir, since you ask me the question, I will say that in one sense of the term it was mine, and in another it was not.  The ring was mine, because it had been offered to me as a gift the day before.  The ring was not mine, because I had refused to take it when it was offered.”

At these words, spoken with such quietness they seemed like the mechanical utterances of a woman in a trance, Mr. Ferris started to his feet.  He could no longer doubt that evidence of an important nature lay before him.

“And may I ask,” he inquired, without any idea of the martyrdom he caused, “what was the name of the person who offered you this ring, and from whom you refused to take it?”

“The name?” She quavered for a moment, and her eyes flashed up toward heaven with a look of wild appeal, as if the requirement of this moment was more than even she had strength to meet.  Then a certain terrible calm settled upon her, blotting the last hint of feeling from her face, and, rising up in her turn, she met Mr. Ferris’ inquiring eye, and slowly and distinctly replied: 

“It was Craik Mansell, sir.  He is a nephew of Mrs. Clemmens.”

It was the name Mr. Ferris had come there to hear, yet it gave him a slight shock when it fell from her lips ­perhaps because his mind was still running upon her supposed relations with Mr. Orcutt.  But he did not show his feelings, however, and calmly asked: 

“And was Mr. Mansell in this town the day before the assault upon his aunt?”

“He was.”

“And you had a conversation with him?”

“I had.”

“May I ask where?”

For the first time she flushed; womanly shame had not yet vanished entirely from her stricken breast; but she responded as steadily as before: 

“In the woods, sir, back of Mrs. Clemmens’ house.  There were reasons” ­she paused ­“there were good reasons, which I do not feel obliged to state, why a meeting in such a place was not discreditable to us.”

Mr. Ferris, who had received from other sources a full version of the interview to which she thus alluded, experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling against one he could not but consider as a detected coquette; and, drawing quickly back, made a gesture such as was not often witnessed in those elegant apartments.

“You mean,” said he, with a sharp edge to his tone that passed over her dreary soul unheeded, “that you were lovers?”

“I mean,” said she, like the automaton she surely was at that moment, “that he had paid me honorable addresses, and that I had no reason to doubt his motives or my own in seeking such a meeting.”

“Miss Dare,” ­all the District Attorney spoke in the manner of Mr. Ferris now, ­“if you refused Mr. Mansell his ring, you must have returned it to him?”

She looked at him with an anguish that bespoke her full appreciation of all this question implied, but unequivocally bowed her head.

“It was in his possession, then,” he continued, “when you left him on that day and returned to your home?”

“Yes,” her lips seemed to say, though no distinct utterance came from them.

“And you did not see it again till you found it on the floor of Mrs. Clemmens’ dining-room the morning of the murder?”

“No.”

“Miss Dare,” said he, with greater mildness, after a short pause, “you have answered my somewhat painful inquiries with a straightforwardness I cannot sufficiently commend.  If you will now add to my gratitude by telling me whether you have informed any one else of the important facts you have just given me, I will distress you by no further questions.”

“Sir,” said she, and her attitude showed that she could endure but little more, “I have taken no one else into my confidence.  Such knowledge as I had to impart was not matter for idle gossip.”

And Mr. Ferris, being thus assured that his own surmises and that of Hickory were correct, bowed with the respect her pale face and rigid attitude seemed to demand, and considerately left the house.

CHAPTER XI - CRAIK MANSELL.

          Bring me unto my trial when you will. ­HENRY VI.

“HE is here.”

Mr. Ferris threw aside his cigar, and looked up at Mr. Byrd, who was standing before him.

“You had no difficulty, then?”

“No, sir.  He acted like a man in hourly expectation of some such summons.  At the very first intimation of your desire to see him in Sibley, he rose from his desk, with what I thought was a meaning look at Mr. Goodman, and after a few preparations for departure, signified he was ready to take the next train.”

“And did he ask no questions?”

“Only one.  He wished to know if I were a detective.  And when I responded ‘Yes,’ observed with an inquiring look:  ’I am wanted as a witness, I suppose.’  A suggestion to which I was careful to make no reply.”

Mr. Ferris pushed aside his writing and glanced toward the door.  “Show him in, Mr. Byrd,” said he.

A moment after Mr. Mansell entered the room.

The District Attorney had never seen this man, and was struck at once by the force and manliness of his appearance.  Half-rising from his seat to greet the visitor, he said: 

“I have to beg your pardon, Mr. Mansell.  Feeling it quite necessary to see you, I took the liberty of requesting you to take this journey, my own time being fully occupied at present.”

Mr. Mansell bowed ­a slow, self-possessed bow, ­and advancing to the table before which the District Attorney sat, laid his hand firmly upon it and said: 

“No apologies are needed.”  Then shortly, “What is it you want of me?”

The words were almost the same as those which had been used by Mr. Hildreth under similar circumstances, but how different was their effect!  The one was the utterance of a weak man driven to bay, the other of a strong one.  Mr. Ferris, who was by no means of an impressible organization, flashed a look of somewhat uneasy doubt at Mr. Byrd, and hesitated slightly before proceeding.

“We have sent for you in this friendly way,” he remarked, at last, “in order to give you that opportunity for explaining certain matters connected with your aunt’s sudden death which your well-known character and good position seem to warrant.  We think you can do this.  At all events I have accorded myself the privilege of so supposing; and any words you may have to say will meet with all due consideration.  As Mrs. Clemmens’ nephew, you, of course, desire to see her murderer brought to justice.”

The slightly rising inflection given to the last few words made them to all intents and purposes a question, and Mr. Byrd, who stood near by, waited anxiously for the decided Yes which seemed the only possible reply under the circumstances, but it did not come.

Surprised, and possibly anxious, the District Attorney repeated himself.

“As her nephew,” said he, “and the inheritor of the few savings she has left behind her, you can have but one wish on this subject, Mr. Mansell?”

But this attempt succeeded no better than the first.  Beyond a slight compression of the lips, Mr. Mansell gave no manifestation of having heard this remark, and both Mr. Ferris and the detective found themselves forced to wonder at the rigid honesty of a man who, whatever death-giving blow he may have dealt, would not allow himself to escape the prejudice of his accusers by assenting to a supposition he and they knew to be false.

Mr. Ferris did not press the question.

“Mr. Mansell,” he remarked instead, “a person by the name of Gouverneur Hildreth is, as you must know, under arrest at this time, charged with the crime of having given the blow that led to your aunt’s death.  The evidence against him is strong, and the public generally have no doubt that his arrest will lead to trial, if not to conviction.  But, unfortunately for us, however fortunately for him, another person has lately been found, against whom an equal show of evidence can be raised, and it is for the purpose of satisfying ourselves that it is but a show, we have requested your presence here to-day.”

A spasm, vivid as it was instantaneous, distorted for a moment the powerful features of Craik Mansell at the words, “another person,” but it was gone before the sentence was completed; and when Mr. Ferris ceased, he looked up with the steady calmness which made his bearing so remarkable.

“I am waiting to hear the name of this freshly suspected person,” he observed.

“Cannot you imagine?” asked the District Attorney, coldly, secretly disconcerted under a gaze that held his own with such steady persistence.

The eyeballs of the other flashed like coals of fire.

“I think it is my right to hear it spoken,” he returned.

This display of feeling restored Mr. Ferris to himself.

“In a moment, sir,” said he.  “Meanwhile, have you any objections to answering a few questions I would like to put to you?”

“I will hear them,” was the steady reply.

“You know,” said the District Attorney, “you are at perfect liberty to answer or not, as you see fit.  I have no desire to entrap you into any acknowledgments you may hereafter regret.”

“Speak,” was the sole response he received.

“Well, sir,” said Mr. Ferris, “are you willing to tell me where you were when you first heard of the assault which had been made upon your aunt?”

“I was in my place at the mill.”

“And ­pardon me if I go too far ­were you also there the morning she was murdered?”

“No, sir.”

“Mr. Mansell, if you could tell us where you were at that time, it would be of great benefit to us, and possibly to yourself.”

“To myself?”

Having shown his surprise, or, possibly, his alarm, by the repetition of the other’s words, Craik Mansell paused and looked slowly around the room until he encountered Mr. Byrd’s eye.  There was a steady compassion in the look he met there that seemed to strike him with great force, for he at once replied that he was away from home, and stopped ­his glance still fixed upon Mr. Byrd, as if, by the very power of his gaze, he would force the secrets of that detective’s soul to the surface.

“Mr. Mansell,” pursued the District Attorney, “a distinct avowal on your part of the place where you were at that time, would be best for us both, I am sure.”

“Do you not already know?” inquired the other, his eye still upon Horace Byrd.

“We have reason to think you were in this town,” averred Mr. Ferris, with an emphasis calculated to recall the attention of his visitor to himself.

“And may I ask,” Craik Mansell quietly said, “what reason you can have for such a supposition?  No one could have seen me here, for, till to-day I have not entered the streets of this place since my visit to my aunt three months ago.”

“It was not necessary to enter the streets of this town to effect a visit to Mrs. Clemmens’ house, Mr. Mansell.”

“No?”

There was the faintest hint of emotion in the intonation he gave to that one word, but it vanished before he spoke his next sentence.

“And how,” asked he, “can a person pass from Sibley Station to the door of my aunt’s house without going through the streets?”

Instead of replying, Mr. Ferris inquired: 

“Did you get out at Sibley Station, Mr. Mansell?”

But the other, with unmoved self-possession, returned: 

“I have not said so.”

“Mr. Mansell,” the District Attorney now observed, “we have no motive in deceiving or even in misleading you.  You were in this town on the morning of your aunt’s murder, and you were even in her house.  Evidence which you cannot dispute proves this, and the question that now arises, and of whose importance we leave you to judge, is whether you were there prior to the visit of Mr. Hildreth, or after.  Any proof you may have to show that it was before will receive its due consideration.”

A change, decided as it was involuntary, took place in the hitherto undisturbed countenance of Craik Mansell.  Leaning forward, he surveyed Mr. Ferris with great earnestness.

“I asked that man,” said he, pointing with a steady forefinger at the somewhat abashed detective, “if I were not wanted here simply as a witness, and he did not say No.  Now, sir,” he continued, turning back with a slight gesture of disdain to the District Attorney, “was the man right in allowing me to believe such a fact, or was he not?  I would like an answer to my question before I proceed further, if you please.”

“You shall have it, Mr. Mansell.  If this man did not answer you, it was probably because he did not feel justified in so doing.  He knew I had summoned you here in the hope of receiving such explanations of your late conduct as should satisfy me you had nothing to do with your aunt’s murder.  The claims upon my consideration, which are held by certain persons allied to you in this matter” ­Mr. Ferris’ look was eloquent of his real meaning here ­“are my sole justification for this somewhat unusual method of dealing with a suspected man.”

A smile, bitter, oh, how bitter in its irony! traversed the firm-set lips of Craik Mansell for a moment, then he bowed with a show of deference to the District Attorney, and settling into the attitude of a man willing to plead his own cause, responded: 

“It would be more just, perhaps, if I first heard the reasons you have for suspecting me, before I attempt to advance arguments to prove the injustice of your suspicions.”

“Well,” said Mr. Ferris, “you shall have them.  If frankness on my part can do aught to avert the terrible scandal which your arrest and its consequent developments would cause, I am willing to sacrifice thus much to my friendship for Mr. Orcutt.  But if I do this, I shall expect an equal frankness in return.  The matter is too serious for subterfuge.”

The other merely waved his hand.

“The reasons,” proceeded Mr. Ferris, “for considering you a party as much open to suspicion as Mr. Hildreth, are several.  First, we have evidence to prove your great desire for a sum of money equal to your aunt’s savings, in order to introduce an invention which you have just patented.

“Secondly, we can show that you left your home in Buffalo the day before the assault, came to Monteith, the next town to this, alighted at the remote station assigned to the use of the quarrymen, crossed the hills and threaded the woods till you came to a small hut back of your aunt’s house, where you put up for the night.

“Thirdly, evidence is not lacking to prove that while there you visited your aunt’s once, if not twice; the last time on the very morning she was killed, entering the house in a surreptitious way by the back door, and leaving it in the same suspicious manner.

“And fourthly, we can prove that you escaped from this place as you had come, secretly, and through a difficult and roundabout path over the hills.

“Mr. Mansell, these facts, taken with your reticence concerning a visit so manifestly of importance to the authorities to know, must strike even you as offering grounds for a suspicion as grave as that attaching to Mr. Hildreth.”

With a restraint marked as it was impressive, Mr. Mansell looked at the District Attorney for a moment, and then said: 

“You speak of proof.  Now, what proof have you to give that I put up, as you call it, for a night, or even for an hour, in the hut which stands in the woods back of my aunt’s house?”

“This,” was Mr. Ferris’ reply.  “It is known you were in the woods the afternoon previous to the assault upon your aunt, because you were seen there in company with a young lady with whom you were holding a tryst.  Did you speak, sir?”

“No!” was the violent, almost disdainful, rejoinder.

“You did not sleep at your aunt’s, for her rooms contained not an evidence of having been opened for a guest, while the hut revealed more than one trace of having been used as a dormitory.  I could even tell you where you cut the twigs of hemlock that served you for a pillow, and point to the place where you sat when you scribbled over the margin of the Buffalo Courier with a blue pencil, such as that I now see projecting from your vest pocket.”

“It is not necessary,” replied the young man, heavily frowning.  Then with another short glance at Mr. Ferris, he again demanded: 

“What is your reason for stating I visited my aunt’s house on the morning she was murdered?  Did any one see me do it? or does the house, like the hut, exhibit traces of my presence there at that particular time?”

There was irony in his tone, and a disdain almost amounting to scorn in his wide-flashing blue eyes; but Mr. Ferris, glancing at the hand clutched about the railing of the desk, remarked quietly: 

“You do not wear the diamond ring you carried away with you from the tryst I mentioned?  Can it be that the one which was picked up after the assault, on the floor of Mrs. Clemmens’ dining-room, could have fallen from your finger, Mr. Mansell?”

A start, the first this powerfully repressed man had given, showed that his armor of resistance had been pierced at last.

“How do you know,” he quickly asked, “that I carried away a diamond ring from the tryst you speak of?”

“Circumstances,” returned the District Attorney, “prove it beyond a doubt.  Miss Dare ­”

“Miss Dare!”

Oh, the indescribable tone of this exclamation!  Mr. Byrd shuddered as he heard it, and looked at Mr. Mansell with a new feeling, for which he had no name.

“Miss Dare,” repeated the District Attorney, without, apparently, regarding the interruption, “acknowledges she returned you the ring which you endeavored at that interview to bestow upon her.”

“Ah!” The word came after a moment’s pause.  “I see the case has been well worked up, and it only remains for me to give you such explanations as I choose to make.  Sir,” declared he, stepping forward, and bringing his clenched hand down upon the desk at which Mr. Ferris was sitting, “I did not kill my aunt.  I admit that I paid her a visit.  I admit that I stayed in the woods back of her house, and even slept in the hut, as you have said; but that was on the day previous to her murder, and not after it.  I went to see her for the purpose of again urging the claims of my invention upon her.  I went secretly, and by the roundabout way you describe, because I had another purpose in visiting Sibley, which made it expedient for me to conceal my presence in the town.  I failed in my efforts to enlist the sympathies of my aunt in regard to my plans, and I failed also in compassing that other desire of my heart of which the ring you mention was a token.  Both failures unnerved me, and I lay in that hut all night.  I even lay there most of the next morning; but I did not see my aunt again, and I did not lift my hand against her life.”

There was indescribable quiet in the tone, but there was indescribable power also, and the look he levelled upon the District Attorney was unwaveringly solemn and hard.

“You deny, then, that you entered the widow’s house on the morning of the murder?”

“I do.”

“It is, then, a question of veracity between you and Miss Dare?”

Silence.

“She asserts she gave you back the ring you offered her.  If this is so, and that ring was in your possession after you left her on Monday evening, how came it to be in the widow’s dining-room the next morning, if you did not carry it there?”

“I can only repeat my words,” rejoined Mr. Mansell.

The District Attorney replied impatiently.  For various reasons he did not wish to believe this man guilty.

“You do not seem very anxious to assist me in my endeavors to reach the truth,” he observed.  “Cannot you tell me what you did with the ring after you left Miss Dare?  Whether you put it on your finger, or thrust it into your pocket, or tossed it into the marsh?  If you did not carry it to the house, some one else must have done so, and you ought to be able to help us in determining who.”

But Mr. Mansell shortly responded: 

“I have nothing to say about the ring.  From the moment Miss Dare returned it to me, as you say, it was, so far as I am concerned, a thing forgotten.  I do not know as I should ever have thought of it again, if you had not mentioned it to me to-day.  How it vanished from my possession only to reappear upon the scene of murder, some more clever conjurer than myself must explain.”

“And this is all you have to say, Mr. Mansell?”

“This is all I have to say.”

“Byrd,” suggested the District Attorney, after a long pause, during which the subject of his suspicions had stood before him as rigid and inscrutable as a statue in bronze, “Mr. Mansell would probably like to go to the hotel, unless, indeed, he desires to return immediately to Buffalo.”

Craik Mansell at once started forward.

“Do you intend to allow me to return to Buffalo?” he asked.

“Yes,” was the District Attorney’s reply.

“You are a good man,” broke involuntarily from the other’s lips, and he impulsively reached out his hand, but as quickly drew it back with a flush of pride that greatly became him.

“I do not say,” quoth Mr. Ferris, “that I exempt you from surveillance.  As prosecuting attorney of this district, my duty is to seek out and discover the man who murdered Mrs. Clemmens, and your explanations have not been as full or as satisfactory as I could wish.”

“Your men will always find me at my desk in the mill,” said Mr. Mansell, coldly.  And, with another short bow, he left the attorney’s side and went quickly out.

“That man is innocent,” declared Mr. Ferris, as Horace Byrd leaned above him in expectation of instructions to keep watch over the departing visitor.

“The way in which he held out his hand to me spoke volumes.”

The detective cast a sad glance at Craik Mansell’s retreating figure.

“You could not convince Hickory of that fact,” said he.

CHAPTER XII - MR. ORCUTT.

          What is it she does now? ­MACBETH.

          My resolution’s plac’d, and I have nothing
          Of woman in me.  Now, from head to foot
          I am marble ­constant. ­ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.

THESE words rang in the ears of Mr. Ferris.  For he felt himself disturbed by them.  Hickory did not believe Mr. Mansell innocent.

At last he sent for that detective.

“Hickory,” he asked, “why do you think Mansell, rather than Hildreth, committed this crime?”

Now this query, on the part of the District Attorney, put Hickory into a quandary.  He wished to keep his promise to Horace Byrd, and yet he greatly desired to answer his employer’s question truthfully.  Without any special sympathies of his own, he yet had an undeniable leaning toward justice, and justice certainly demanded the indictment of Mansell.  He ended by compromising matters.

“Mr. Ferris,” said he, “when you went to see Miss Dare the other day, what did you think of her state of mind?”

“That it was a very unhappy one.”

“Didn’t you think more than that, sir?  Didn’t you think she believed Mr. Mansell guilty of this crime?”

“Yes,” admitted the other, with reluctance.

“If Miss Dare is attached to Mr. Mansell, she must feel certain of his guilt to offer testimony against him.  Her belief should go for something, sir; for much, it strikes me, when you consider what a woman she is.”

This conversation increased Mr. Ferris’ uneasiness.  Much as he wished to spare the feelings of Miss Dare, and, through her, those of his friend, Mr. Orcutt, the conviction of Mansell’s criminality was slowly gaining ground in his mind.  He remembered the peculiar manner of the latter during the interview they had held together; his quiet acceptance of the position of a suspected man, and his marked reticence in regard to the ring.  Though the delicate nature of the interests involved might be sufficient to explain his behavior in the latter regard, his whole conduct could not be said to be that of a disinterested man, even if it were not necessarily that of a guilty one.  In whatever way Mr. Ferris looked at it, he could come to but one conclusion, and that was, that justice to Hildreth called for such official attention to the evidence which had been collected against Mansell as should secure the indictment of that man against whom could be brought the more convincing proof of guilt.

Not that Mr. Ferris meant, or in anywise considered it good policy, to have Mansell arrested at this time.  As the friend of Mr. Orcutt, it was manifestly advisable for him to present whatever evidence he possessed against Mansell directly to the Grand Jury.  For in this way he would not only save the lawyer from the pain and humiliation of seeing the woman he so much loved called up as a witness against the man who had successfully rivalled him in her affections, but would run the chance, at least, of eventually preserving from open knowledge, the various details, if not the actual facts, which had led to this person being suspected of crime.  For the Grand Jury is a body whose business it is to make secret inquisition into criminal offences.  Its members are bound by oath to the privacy of their deliberations.  If, therefore, they should find the proofs presented to them by the District Attorney insufficient to authorize an indictment against Mansell, nothing of their proceedings would transpire.  While, on the contrary, if they decided that the evidence was such as to oblige them to indict Mansell instead of Hildreth, neither Mr. Orcutt nor Miss Dare could hold the District Attorney accountable for the exposures that must follow.

The course, therefore, of Mr. Ferris was determined upon.  All the evidence in his possession against both parties, together with the verdict of the coroner’s jury, should go at once before the Grand Jury; Mansell, in the meantime, being so watched that a bench-warrant issuing upon the indictment would have him safely in custody at any moment.

But this plan for saving Mr. Orcutt’s feelings did not succeed as fully as Mr. Ferris hoped.  By some means or other the rumor got abroad that another man than Hildreth had fallen under the suspicion of the authorities, and one day Mr. Ferris found himself stopped on the street by the very person he had for a week been endeavoring to avoid.

“Mr. Orcutt!” he cried, “how do you do?  I did not recognize you at first.”

“No?” was the sharp rejoinder.  “I’m not myself nowadays.  I have a bad cold.”  With which impatient explanation he seized Mr. Ferris by the arm and said:  “But what is this I hear?  You have your eye on another party suspected of being Mrs. Clemmens’ murderer?”

The District Attorney bowed uneasily.  He had hoped to escape the discussion of this subject with Mr. Orcutt.

The lawyer observed the embarrassment his question had caused, and instantly turned pale, notwithstanding the hardihood which a long career at the bar had given him.

“Ferris,” he pursued, in a voice he strove hard to keep steady, “we have always been good friends, in spite of the many tilts we have had together before the court.  Will you be kind enough to inform me if your suspicions are founded upon evidence collected by yourself, or at the instigation of parties professing to know more about this murder than they have hitherto revealed?”

Mr. Ferris could not fail to understand the true nature of this question, and out of pure friendship answered quietly: 

“I have allowed myself to look with suspicion upon this Mansell ­for it is Mrs. Clemmens’ nephew who is at present occupying our attention, ­because the facts which have come to light in his regard are as criminating in their nature as those which have transpired in reference to Mr. Hildreth.  The examination into this matter, which my duty requires, has been any thing but pleasant to me, Mr. Orcutt.  The evidence of such witnesses as will have to be summoned before the Grand Jury, is of a character to bring open humiliation, if not secret grief, upon persons for whom I entertain the highest esteem.”

The pointed way in which this was said convinced Mr. Orcutt that his worst fears had been realized.  Turning partly away, but not losing his hold upon the other’s arm, he observed with what quietness he could: 

“You say that so strangely, I feel forced to put another question to you.  If what I have to ask strikes you with any surprise, remember that my own astonishment and perplexity at being constrained to interrogate you in this way, are greater than any sensation you can yourself experience.  What I desire to know is this.  Among the witnesses you have collected against this last suspected party, there are some women, are there not?”

The District Attorney gravely bowed.

“Ferris, is Miss Dare amongst them?”

“Orcutt, she is.”

With a look that expressed his secret mistrust the lawyer gave way to a sudden burst of feeling.

“Ferris,” he wrathfully acknowledged, “I may be a fool, but I don’t see what she can have to say on this subject.  It is impossible she should know any thing about the murder; and, as for this Mansell ­” He made a violent gesture with his hand, as if the very idea of her having any acquaintance with the nephew of Mrs. Clemmens were simply preposterous.

The District Attorney, who saw from this how utterly ignorant the other was concerning Miss Dare’s relations to the person named, felt his embarrassment increase.

“Mr. Orcutt,” he replied, “strange as it may appear to you, Miss Dare has testimony to give of value to the prosecution, or she would not be reckoned among its witnesses.  What that testimony is, I must leave to her discretion to make known to you, as she doubtless will, if you question her with sufficient consideration.  I never forestall matters myself, nor would you wish me to tell you what would more becomingly come from her own lips.  But, Mr. Orcutt, this I can say:  that if it had been given me to choose between the two alternatives of resigning my office and of pursuing an inquiry which obliges me to submit to the unpleasantness of a judicial investigation a person held in so much regard by yourself, I would have given up my office with pleasure, so keenly do I feel the embarrassment of my position and the unhappiness of yours.  But any mere resignation on my part would have availed nothing to save Miss Dare from appearing before the Grand Jury.  The evidence she has to give in this matter makes the case against Mansell as strong as that against Hildreth, and it would be the duty of any public prosecutor to recognize the fact and act accordingly.”

Mr. Orcutt, who had by the greatest effort succeeded in calming himself through this harangue, flashed sarcastically at this last remark, and surveyed Mr. Ferris with a peculiar look.

“Are you sure,” he inquired in a slow, ironical tone, “that she has not succeeded in making it stronger?”

The look, the tone, were unexpected, and greatly startled Mr. Ferris.  Drawing nearer to his friend, he returned his gaze with marked earnestness.

“What do you mean?” he asked, with secret anxiety.

But the wary lawyer had already repented this unwise betrayal of his own doubts.  Meeting his companion’s eye with a calmness that amazed himself, he remarked, instead of answering: 

“It was through Miss Dare, then, that your attention was first drawn to Mrs. Clemmens’ nephew?”

“No,” disclaimed Mr. Ferris, hastily.  “The detectives already had their eyes upon him.  But a hint from her went far toward determining me upon pursuing the matter,” he allowed, seeing that his friend was determined upon hearing the truth.

“So then,” observed the other, with a stern dryness that recalled his manner at the bar, “she opened a communication with you herself?”

“Yes.”

It was enough.  Mr. Orcutt dropped the arm of Mr. Ferris, and, with his usual hasty bow, turned shortly away.  The revelation which he believed himself to have received in this otherwise far from satisfactory interview, was one that he could not afford to share ­that is, not yet; not while any hope remained that circumstances would so arrange themselves as to make it unnecessary for him to do so.  If Imogene Dare, out of her insane desire to free Gouverneur Hildreth from the suspicion that oppressed him, had resorted to perjury and invented evidence tending to show the guilt of another party ­and remembering her admissions at their last interview and the language she had used in her letter of farewell, no other conclusion offered itself, ­what alternative was left him but to wait till he had seen her before he proceeded to an interference that would separate her from himself by a gulf still greater than that which already existed between them?  To be sure, the jealousy which consumed him, the passionate rage that seized his whole being when he thought of all she dared do for the man she loved, or that he thought she loved, counselled him to nip this attempt of hers in the bud, and by means of a word to Mr. Ferris throw such a doubt upon her veracity as a witness against this new party as should greatly influence the action of the former in the critical business he had in hand.  But Mr. Orcutt, while a prey to unwonted passions, had not yet lost control of his reason, and reason told him that impulse was an unsafe guide for him to follow at this time.  Thought alone ­deep and concentrated thought ­would help him out of this crisis with honor and safety.  But thought would not come at call.  In all his quick walk home but one mad sentence formulated itself in his brain, and that was:  “She loves him so, she is willing to perjure herself for his sake!” Nor, though he entered his door with his usual bustling air and went through all the customary observances of the hour with an appearance of no greater abstraction and gloom than had characterized him ever since the departure of Miss Dare, no other idea obtruded itself upon his mind than this:  “She loves him so, she is willing to perjure herself for his sake!”

Even the sight of his books, his papers, and all that various paraphernalia of work and study which gives character to a lawyer’s library, was insufficient to restore his mind to its usual condition of calm thought and accurate judgment.  Not till the clock struck eight and he found himself almost without his own volition at Professor Darling’s house, did he realize all the difficulties of his position and the almost intolerable nature of the undertaking which had been forced upon him by the exigencies of the situation.

Miss Dare, who had refused to see him at first, came into his presence with an expression that showed him with what reluctance she had finally responded to his peremptory message.  But in the few heavy moments he had been obliged to wait, he had schooled himself to expect coldness if not absolute rebuff.  He therefore took no heed of the haughty air of inquiry which she turned upon him, but came at once to the point, saying almost before she had closed the door: 

“What is this you have been doing, Imogene?”

A flush, such as glints across the face of a marble statue, visited for a moment the still whiteness of her set features, then she replied: 

“Mr. Orcutt, when I left your house I told you I had a wretched and unhappy duty to perform, that, when once accomplished, would separate us forever.  I have done it, and the separation has come; why attempt to bridge it?”

There was a sad weariness in her tone, a sad weariness in her face, but he seemed to recognize neither.  The demon jealousy ­that hindrance to all unselfish feeling ­had gripped him again, and the words that came to his lips were at once bitter and masterful.

“Imogene,” he cried, with as much wrath in his tone as he had ever betrayed in her presence, “you do not answer my question.  I ask you what you have been doing, and you reply, your duty.  Now, what do you mean by duty?  Tell me at once and distinctly, for I will no longer be put off by any roundabout phrases concerning a matter of such vital importance.”

“Tell you?” This repetition of his words had a world of secret anguish in it which he could not help but notice.  She did not succumb to it, however, but continued in another moment:  “You said to me, in the last conversation we held together, that Gouverneur Hildreth could not be released from his terrible position without a distinct proof of innocence or the advancement of such evidence against another as should turn suspicion aside from him into a new and more justifiable quarter.  I could not, any more than he, give a distinct proof of his innocence; but I could furnish the authorities with testimony calculated to arouse suspicion in a fresh direction, and I did it.  For Gouverneur Hildreth had to be saved at any price ­at any price.”

The despairing emphasis she laid upon the last phrase went like hot steel to Mr. Orcutt’s heart, and made his eyes blaze with almost uncontrollable passion.

“Je ne vois pas la nécessite,” said he, in that low, restrained tone of bitter sarcasm which made his invective so dreaded by opposing counsel.  “If Gouverneur Hildreth finds himself in an unfortunate position, he has only his own follies and inordinate desire for this woman’s death to thank for it.  Because you love him and compassionate him beyond all measure, that is no reason why you should perjure yourself, and throw the burden of his shame upon a man as innocent as Mr. Mansell.”

But this tone, though it had made many a witness quail before it, neither awed nor intimidated her.

“You ­you do not understand,” came from her white lips.  “It is Mr. Hildreth who is perfectly innocent, and not ­” But here she paused.  “You will excuse me from saying more,” she said.  “You, as a lawyer, ought to know that I should not be compelled to speak on a subject like this except under oath.”

“Imogene!” A change had passed over Mr. Orcutt.  “Imogene, do you mean to affirm that you really have charges to make against Craik Mansell; that this evidence you propose to give is real, and not manufactured for the purpose of leading suspicion aside from Hildreth?”

It was an insinuation against her veracity he never could have made, or she have listened to, a few weeks before; but the shield of her pride was broken between them, and neither he nor she seemed to give any thought to the reproach conveyed in these words.

“What I have to say is the truth,” she murmured.  “I have not manufactured any thing.”

With an astonishment he took no pains to conceal, Mr. Orcutt anxiously surveyed her.  He could not believe this was so, yet how could he convict her of falsehood in face of that suffering expression of resolve which she wore.  His methods as a lawyer came to his relief.

“Imogene,” he slowly responded, “if, as you say, you are in possession of positive evidence against this Mansell, how comes it that you jeopardized the interests of the man you loved by so long withholding your testimony?”

But instead of the flush of confusion which he expected, she flashed upon him with a sudden revelation of feeling that made him involuntarily start.

“Shall I tell you?” she replied.  “You will have to know some time, and why not now?  I kept back the truth,” she replied, advancing a step, but without raising her eyes to his, “because it is not the aspersed Hildreth that I love, but ­”

Why did she pause?  What was it she found so hard to speak?  Mr. Orcutt’s expression became terrible.

“But the other,” she murmured at last.

“The other!”

It was now her turn to start and look at him in surprise, if not in some fear.

“What other?” he cried, seizing her by the hand.  “Name him.  I will have no further misunderstanding between us.”

“Is it necessary?” she asked, with bitterness.  “Will Heaven spare me nothing?” Then, as she saw no relenting in the fixed gaze that held her own, whispered, in a hollow tone:  “You have just spoken the name yourself ­Craik Mansell.”

“Ah!”

Incredulity, anger, perplexity, all the emotions that were seething in this man’s troubled soul, spoke in that simple exclamation.  Then silence settled upon the room, during which she gained control over herself, and he the semblance of it if no more.  She was the first to speak.

“I know,” said she, “that this avowal on my part seems almost incredible to you; but it is no more so than that which you so readily received from me the other day in reference to Gouverneur Hildreth.  A woman who spends a month away from home makes acquaintances which she does not always mention when she comes back.  I saw Mr. Mansell in Buffalo, and ­” turning, she confronted the lawyer with her large gray eyes, in which a fire burned such as he had never seen there before ­“and grew to esteem him,” she went on.  “For the first time in my life I found myself in the presence of a man whose nature commanded mine.  His ambition, his determination, his unconventional and forcible character woke aspirations within me such as I had never known myself capable of before.  Life, which had stretched out before me with a somewhat monotonous outlook, changed to a panorama of varied and wonderful experiences, as I listened to his voice and met the glance of his eye; and soon, before he knew it, and certainly before I realized it, words of love passed between us, and the agony of that struggle began which has ended ­ Ah, let me not think how, or I shall go mad!”

Mr. Orcutt, who had watched her with a lover’s fascination during all this attempted explanation, shivered for a moment at this last bitter cry of love and despair, but spoke up when he did speak, with a coldness that verged on severity.

“So you loved another man when you came back to my home and listened to the words of passion which came from my lips, and the hopes of future bliss and happiness that welled up from my heart?”

“Yes,” she whispered, “and, as you will remember, I tried to suppress those hopes and turn a deaf ear to those words, though I had but little prospect of marrying a man whose fortunes depended upon the success of an invention he could persuade no one to believe in.”

“Yet you brought yourself to listen to those hopes on the afternoon of the murder,” he suggested, ironically.

“Can you blame me for that?” she cried, “remembering how you pleaded, and what a revulsion of feeling I was laboring under?”

A smile bitter as the fate which loomed before him, and scornful as the feelings that secretly agitated his breast, parted Mr. Orcutt’s pale lips for an instant, and he seemed about to give utterance to some passionate rejoinder, but he subdued himself with a determined effort, and quietly waiting till his voice was under full control, remarked with lawyer-like brevity at last: 

“You have not told me what evidence you have to give against young Mansell?”

Her answer came with equal brevity if not equal quietness.

“No; I have told Mr. Ferris; is not that enough?”

But he did not consider it so.  “Ferris is a District Attorney,” said he, “and has demanded your confidence for the purposes of justice, while I am your friend.  The action you have taken is peculiar, and you may need advice.  But how can I give it or how can you receive it unless there is a complete understanding between us?”

Struck in spite of herself, moved perhaps by a hope she had not allowed herself to contemplate before, she looked at him long and earnestly.

“And do you really wish to help me?” she inquired.  “Are you so generous as to forgive the pain, and possibly the humiliation, I have inflicted upon you, and lend me your assistance in case my testimony works its due effect, and he be brought to trial instead of Mr. Hildreth?”

It was a searching and a pregnant question, for which Mr. Orcutt was possibly not fully prepared, but his newly gained control did not give way.

“I must insist upon hearing the facts before I say any thing of my intentions,” he averred.  “Whatever they may be, they cannot be more startling in their character than those which have been urged against Hildreth.”

“But they are,” she whispered.  Then with a quick look around her, she put her mouth close to Mr. Orcutt’s ear and breathed: 

“Mr. Hildreth is not the only man who, unseen by the neighbors, visited Mrs. Clemmens’ house on the morning of the murder.  Craik Mansell was there also.”

“Craik Mansell!  How do you know that?  Ah,” he pursued, with the scornful intonation of a jealous man, “I forgot that you are lovers.”

The sneer, natural as it was, perhaps, seemed to go to her heart and wake its fiercest indignation.

“Hush,” cried she, towering upon him with an ominous flash of her proud eye.  “Do not turn the knife in that wound or you will seal my lips forever.”  And she moved hastily away from his side.  But in another instant she determinedly returned, saying:  “This is no time for indulging in one’s sensibilities.  I affirm that Craik Mansell visited his aunt on that day, because the ring which was picked up on the floor of her dining-room ­you remember the ring, Mr. Orcutt?”

Remember it!  Did he not?  All his many perplexities in its regard crowded upon him as he made a hurried bow of acquiescence.

“It belonged to him,” she continued.  “He had bought it for me, or, rather, had had the diamond reset for me ­it had been his mother’s.  Only the day before, he had tried to put it on my finger in a meeting we had in the woods back of his aunt’s house.  But I refused to allow him.  The prospect ahead was too dismal and unrelenting for us to betroth ourselves, whatever our hopes or wishes might be.”

“You ­you had a meeting with this man in the woods the day before his aunt was assaulted,” echoed Mr. Orcutt, turning upon her with an amazement that swallowed up his wrath.

“Yes.”

“And he afterward visited her house?”

“Yes.”

“And dropped that ring there?”

“Yes.”

Starting slowly, as if the thoughts roused by this short statement of facts were such as demanded instant consideration, Mr. Orcutt walked to the other side of the room, where he paced up and down in silence for some minutes.  When he returned it was the lawyer instead of the lover who stood before her.

“Then, it was the simple fact of finding this gentleman’s ring on the floor of Mrs. Clemmens’ dining-room that makes you consider him the murderer of his aunt?” he asked, with a tinge of something like irony in his tone.

“No,” she breathed rather than answered.  “That was a proof, of course, that he had been there, but I should never have thought of it as an evidence of guilt if the woman herself had not uttered, in our hearing that tell-tale exclamation of ‘Ring and Hand,’ and if, in the talk I held with Mr. Mansell the day before, he had not betrayed ­ Why do you stop me?” she whispered.

“I did not stop you,” he hastily assured her.  “I am too anxious to hear what you have to say.  Go on, Imogene.  What did this Mansell betray?  I ­I ask as a father might,” he added, with some dignity and no little effort.

But her fears had taken alarm, or her caution been aroused, and she merely said: 

“The five thousand dollars which his aunt leaves him is just the amount he desired to start him in life.”

“Did he wish such an amount?” Mr. Orcutt asked.

“Very much.”

“And acknowledged it in the conversation he had with you?”

“Yes.”

“Imogene,” declared the lawyer, “if you do not want to insure Mr. Mansell’s indictment, I would suggest to you not to lay too great stress upon any talk you may have held with him.”

But she cried with unmoved sternness, and a relentless crushing down of all emotion that was at once amazing and painful to see: 

“The innocent is to be saved from the gallows, no matter what the fate of the guilty may be.”

And a short but agitated silence followed which Mr. Orcutt broke at last by saying: 

“Are these all the facts you have to give me?”

She started, cast him a quick look, bowed her head, and replied: 

“Yes.”

There was something in the tone of this assertion that made him repeat his question.

“Are these all the facts you have to give me?”

Her answer came ringing and emphatic now.

“Yes,” she avowed ­“all.”

With a look of relief, slowly smoothing out the deep furrows of his brow, Mr. Orcutt, for the second time, walked thoughtfully away in evident consultation with his own thoughts.  This time he was gone so long, the suspense became almost intolerable to Imogene.  Feeling that she could endure it no longer, she followed him at last, and laid her hand upon his arm.

“Speak,” she impetuously cried.  “Tell me what you think; what I have to expect.”

But he shook his head.

“Wait,” he returned; “wait till the Grand Jury has brought in a bill of indictment.  It will, doubtless, be against one of these two men; but I must know which, before I can say or do any thing.”

“And do you think there can be any doubt about which of these two it will be?” she inquired, with sudden emotion.

“There is always doubt,” he rejoined, “about any thing or every thing a body of men may do.  This is a very remarkable case, Imogene,” he resumed, with increased sombreness; “the most remarkable one, perhaps, that has ever come under my observation.  What the Grand Jury will think of it; upon which party, Mansell or Hildreth, the weight of their suspicion will fall, neither I nor Ferris, nor any other man, can prophesy with any assurance.  The evidence against both is, in so far as we know, entirely circumstantial.  That you believe Mr. Mansell to be the guilty party ­”

“Believe!” she murmured; “I know it.”

“That you believe him to be the guilty party,” the wary lawyer pursued, as if he had not heard her “does not imply that they will believe it too.  Hildreth comes of a bad stock, and his late attempt at suicide tells wonderfully against him; yet, the facts you have to give in Mansell’s disfavor are strong also, and Heaven only knows what the upshot will be.  However, a few weeks will determine all that, and then ­” Pausing, he looked at her, and, as he did so, the austerity and self-command of the lawyer vanished out of sight, and the passionate gleam of a fierce and overmastering love shone again in his eyes.  “And then,” he cried, “then we will see what Tremont Orcutt can do to bring order out of this chaos.”

There was so much resolve in his look, such a hint of promise in his tone, that she flushed with something almost akin to hope.

“Oh, generous ­” she began.

But he stopped her before she could say more.

“Wait,” he repeated; “wait till we see what action will be taken by the Grand Jury.”  And taking her hand, he looked earnestly, if not passionately, in her face.  “Imogene,” he commenced, “if I should succeed ­” But there he himself stopped short with a quick recalling of his own words, perhaps.  “No,” he cried, “I will say no more till we see which of these two men is to be brought to trial.”  And, pressing her hand to his lips, he gave her one last look in which was concentrated all the secret passions which had been called forth by this hour, and hastily left the room.

CHAPTER XIII - A TRUE BILL.

          Come to me, friend or foe,
          And tell me who is victor, York or Warwick. ­HENRY VI.

THE town of Sibley was in a state of excitement.  About the court-house especially the crowd was great and the interest manifested intense.  The Grand Jury was in session, and the case of the Widow Clemmens was before it.

As all the proceedings of this body are private, the suspense of those interested in the issue was naturally very great.  The name of the man lastly suspected of the crime had transpired, and both Hildreth and Mansell had their partisans, though the mystery surrounding the latter made his friends less forward in asserting his innocence than those of the more thoroughly understood Hildreth.  Indeed, the ignorance felt on all sides as to the express reasons for associating the name of Mrs. Clemmens’ nephew with his aunt’s murder added much to the significance of the hour.  Conjectures were plenty and the wonder great, but the causes why this man, or any other, should lie under a suspicion equal to that raised against Hildreth at the inquest was a mystery that none could solve.

But what is the curiosity of the rabble to us?  Our interest is in a little room far removed from this scene of excitement, where the young daughter of Professor Darling kneels by the side of Imogene Dare, striving by caress and entreaty to win a word from her lips or a glance from her heavy eyes.

“Imogene,” she pleaded, ­“Imogene, what is this terrible grief?  Why did you have to go to the court-house this morning with papa, and why have you been almost dead with terror and misery ever since you got back?  Tell me, or I shall perish of mere fright.  For weeks now, ever since you were so good as to help me with my wedding-clothes, I have seen that something dreadful was weighing upon your mind, but this which you are suffering now is awful; this I cannot bear.  Cannot you speak dear?  Words will do you good.”

“Words!”

Oh, the despair, the bitterness of that single exclamation!  Miss Darling drew back in dismay.  As if released, Imogene rose to her feet and surveyed the sweet and ingenuous countenance uplifted to her own, with a look of faint recognition of the womanly sympathy it conveyed.

“Helen,” she resumed, “you are happy.  Don’t stay here with me, but go where there are cheerfulness and hope.”

“But I cannot while you suffer so.  I love you, Imogene.  Would you drive me away from your side when you are so unhappy?  You don’t care for me as I do for you or you could not do it.”

“Helen!” The deep tone made the sympathetic little bride-elect quiver.  “Helen, some griefs are best borne alone.  Only a few hours now and I shall know the worst.  Leave me.”

But the gentle little creature was not to be driven away.  She only clung the closer and pleaded the more earnestly: 

“Tell me, tell me!”

The reiteration of this request was too much for the pallid woman before her.  Laying her two hands on the shoulders of this child, she drew back and looked her earnestly in the face.

“Helen,” she cried, “what do you know of earthly anguish?  A petted child, the favorite of happy fortune, you have been kept from evil as from a blight.  None of the annoyances of life have been allowed to enter your path, much less its griefs and sins.  Terror with you is but a name, remorse an unknown sensation.  Even your love has no depths in it such as suffering gives.  Yet, since you do love, and love well, perhaps you can understand something of what a human soul can endure who sees its only hope and only love tottering above a gulf too horrible for words to describe ­a gulf, too, which her own hand ­ But no, I cannot tell you.  I overrated my strength.  I ­”

She sank back, but the next moment started again to her feet:  a servant had opened the door.

“What is it!” she exclaimed; “speak, tell me.”

“Only a gentleman to see you, miss.”

“Only a ­” But she stopped in that vain repetition of the girl’s simple words, and looked at her as if she would force from her lips the name she had not the courage to demand; but, failing to obtain it, turned away to the glass, where she quietly smoothed her hair and adjusted the lace at her throat, and then catching sight of the tear-stained face of Helen, stooped and gave her a kiss, after which she moved mechanically to the door and went down those broad flights, one after one, till she came to the parlor, when she went in and encountered ­Mr. Orcutt.

A glance at his face told her all she wanted to know.

“Ah!” she gasped, “it is then ­”

“Mansell!”

It was five minutes later.  Imogene leaned against the window where she had withdrawn herself at the utterance of that one word.  Mr. Orcutt stood a couple of paces behind her.

“Imogene,” said he, “there is a question I would like to have you answer.”

The feverish agitation expressed in his tone made her look around.

“Put it,” she mechanically replied.

But he did not find it easy to do this, while her eyes rested upon him in such despair.  He felt, however, that the doubt in his mind must be satisfied at all hazards; so choking down an emotion that was almost as boundless as her own, he ventured to ask: 

“Is it among the possibilities that you could ever again contemplate giving yourself in marriage to Craik Mansell, no matter what the issue of the coming trial may be?”

A shudder quick and powerful as that which follows the withdrawal of a dart from an agonizing wound shook her whole frame for a moment, but she answered, steadily: 

“No; how can you ask, Mr. Orcutt?”

A gleam of relief shot across his somewhat haggard features.

“Then,” said he, “it will be no treason in me to assure you that never has my love been greater for you than to-day.  That to save you from the pain which you are suffering, I would sacrifice every thing, even my pride.  If, therefore, there is any kindness I can show you, any deed I can perform for your sake, I am ready to attempt it, Imogene.

“Would you ­” she hesitated, but gathered courage as she met his eye ­“would you be willing to go to him with a message from me?”

His glance fell and his lips took a line that startled Imogene, but his answer, though given with bitterness was encouraging.

“Yes,” he returned; “even that.”

“Then,” she cried, “tell him that to save the innocent, I had to betray the guilty, but in doing this I did not spare myself; that whatever his doom may be, I shall share it, even though it be that of death.”

“Imogene!”

“Will you tell him?” she asked.

But he would not have been a man, much less a lover, if he could answer that question now.  Seizing her by the arm, he looked her wildly in the face.

“Do you mean to kill yourself?” he demanded.

“I feel I shall not live,” she gasped, while her hand went involuntarily to her heart.

He gazed at her in horror.

“And if he is cleared?” he hoarsely ejaculated.

“I ­I shall try to endure my fate.”

He gave her another long, long look.

“So this is the alternative you give me?” he bitterly exclaimed.  “I must either save this man or see you perish.  Well,” he declared, after a few minutes’ further contemplation of her face, “I will save this man ­that is, if he will allow me to do so.”

A flash of joy such as he had not perceived on her countenance for weeks transformed its marble-like severity into something of its pristine beauty.

“And you will take him my message also?” she cried.

But to this he shook his head.

“If I am to approach him as a lawyer willing to undertake his cause, don’t you see I can give him no such message as that?”

“Ah, yes, yes.  But you can tell him Imogene Dare has risked her own life and happiness to save the innocent.”

“I will tell him whatever I can to show your pity and your misery.”

And she had to content herself with this.  In the light of the new hope that was thus unexpectedly held out to her, it did not seem so difficult.  Giving Mr. Orcutt her hand, she endeavored to thank him, but the reaction from her long suspense was too much, and, for the first time in her brave young life, Imogene lost consciousness and fainted quite away.

CHAPTER XIV - AMONG TELESCOPES AND CHARTS.

          Tarry a little ­there is something else. ­MERCHANT OF VENICE.

GOUVERNEUR HILDRETH was discharged and Craik Mansell committed to prison to await his trial.

Horace Byrd, who no longer had any motive for remaining in Sibley, had completed all his preparations to return to New York.  His valise was packed, his adieus made, and nothing was left for him to do but to step around to the station, when he bethought him of a certain question he had not put to Hickory.

Seeking him out, he propounded it.

“Hickory,” said he, “have you ever discovered in the course of your inquiries where Miss Dare was on the morning of the murder?”

The stalwart detective, who was in a very contented frame of mind, answered up with great cheeriness: 

“Haven’t I, though!  It was one of the very first things I made sure of.  She was at Professor Darling’s house on Summer Avenue.”

“At Professor Darling’s house?” Mr. Byrd felt a sensation of dismay.  Professor Darling’s house was, as you remember, in almost direct communication with Mrs. Clemmens’ cottage by means of a path through the woods.  As Mr. Byrd recalled his first experience in threading those woods, and remembered with what suddenness he had emerged from them only to find himself in full view of the West Side and Professor Darling’s spacious villa, he stared uneasily at his colleague and said: 

“It is train time, Hickory, but I cannot help that.  Before I leave this town I must know just what she was doing on that morning, and whom she was with.  Can you find out?”

“Can I find out?”

The hardy detective was out of the door before the last word of this scornful repetition had left his lips.

He was gone an hour.  When he returned he looked very much excited.

“Well!” he ejaculated, breathlessly, “I have had an experience.”

Mr. Byrd gave him a look, saw something he did not like in his face, and moved uneasily in his chair.

“You have?” he retorted.  “What is it?  Speak.”

“Do you know,” the other resumed, “that the hardest thing I ever had to do was to keep my head down in the hut the other day, and deny myself a look at the woman who could bear herself so bravely in the midst of a scene so terrible.  Well,” he went on, “I have to-day been rewarded for my self-control.  I have seen Miss Dare.”

Horace Byrd could scarcely restrain his impatience.

“Where?” he demanded.  “How?  Tell a fellow, can’t you?”

“I am going to,” protested Hickory.  “Cannot you wait a minute? I had to wait forty.  Well,” he continued more pleasantly as he saw the other frown, “I went to Professor Darling’s.  There is a girl there I have talked to before, and I had no difficulty in seeing her or getting a five minutes’ chat with her at the back-gate.  Odd how such girls will talk!  She told me in three minutes all I wanted to know.  Not that it was so much, only ­”

“Do get on,” interrupted Mr. Byrd.  “When did Miss Dare come to the house on the morning Mrs. Clemmens was murdered, and what did she do while there?”

“She came early; by ten o’clock or so, I believe, and she sat, if she did sit, in an observatory they have at the top of the house:  a place where she often used to go, I am told, to study astronomy with Professor Darling’s oldest daughter.”

“And was Miss Darling with her that morning?  Did they study together all the time she was in the house?”

“No; that is, the girl said no one went up to the observatory with Miss Dare; that Miss Darling did not happen to be at home that day, and Miss Dare had to study alone.  Hearing this,” pursued Hickory, answering the look of impatience in the other’s face, “I had a curiosity to interview the observatory, and being ­well, not a clumsy fellow at softsoaping a girl ­I at last succeeded in prevailing upon her to take me up.  Byrd, will you believe me when I tell you that we did it without going into the house?”

“What?”

“I mean,” corrected the other, “without entering the main part of the building.  The professor’s house has a tower, you know, at the upper angle toward the woods, and it is in the top of that tower he keeps his telescopes and all that kind of thing.  The tower has a special staircase of its own.  It is a spiral one, and opens on a door below that connects directly with the garden.  We went up these stairs.”

“You dared to?”

“Yes; the girl assured me every one was out of the house but the servants, and I believed her.  We went up the stairs, entered the observatory ­”

“It is not kept locked, then?”

“It was not locked to-day ­saw the room, which is a curious one ­glanced out over the view, which is well worth seeing, and then ­”

“Well, what?”

“I believe I stood still and asked the girl a question or two more.  I inquired,” he went on, deprecating the other’s impatience by a wave of his nervous hand, “when Miss Dare came down from this place on the morning you remember.  She answered that she couldn’t quite tell; that she wouldn’t have remembered any thing about it at all, only that Miss Tremaine came to the house that morning, and wanting to see Miss Dare, ordered her to go up to the observatory and tell that lady to come down, and that she went, but to her surprise did not find Miss Dare there, though she was sure she had not gone home, or, at least, hadn’t taken any of the cars that start from the front of the house, for she had looked at them every one as they went by the basement window where she was at work.”

“The girl said this?”

“Yes, standing in the door of this small room, and looking me straight in the eye.”

“And did you ask her nothing more?  Say nothing about the time, Hickory, or ­or inquire where she supposed Miss Dare to have gone?”

“Yes, I asked her all this.  I am not without curiosity any more than you are, Mr. Byrd.”

“And she replied?”

“Oh, as to the time, that it was somewhere before noon.  Her reason for being sure of this was that Miss Tremaine declined to wait till another effort had been made to find Miss Dare, saying she had an engagement at twelve which she did not wish to break.”

“And the girl’s notions about where Miss Dare had gone?”

“Such as you expect, Byrd.  She said she did not know any thing about it, but that Miss Dare often went strolling in the garden, or even in the woods when she came to Professor Darling’s house, and that she supposed she had gone off on some such walk at this time, for, at one o’clock or thereabouts, she saw her pass in the horse-car on her way back to the town.”

“Hickory, I wish you had not told me this just as I am going back to the city.”

“Wish I had not told it, or wish I had not gone to Professor Darling’s house as you requested?”

“Wish you had not told it.  I dare not wish the other.  But you spoke of seeing Miss Dare; how was that?  Where did you run across her?”

“Do you want to hear?”

“Of course, of course.”

“But I thought ­”

“Oh, never mind, old boy; tell me the whole now, as long as you have told me any.  Was she in the house?”

“I will tell you.  I had asked the girl all these questions, as I have said, and was about to leave the observatory and go below when I thought I would cast another glance around the curious old place, and in doing so caught a glimpse of a huge portfolio of charts, as I supposed, standing upright in a rack that stretched across the further portion of the room.  Somehow my heart misgave me when I saw this rack, and, scarcely conscious what it was I feared, I crossed the floor and looked behind the portfolio.  Byrd, there was a woman crouched there ­a woman whose pallid cheeks and burning eyes lifted to meet my own, told me only too plainly that it was Miss Dare.  I have had many experiences,” Hickory allowed, after a moment, “and some of them any thing but pleasant to myself, but I don’t think I ever felt just as I did at that instant.  I believe I attempted a bow ­I don’t remember; or, at least, tried to murmur some excuse, but the look that came into her face paralyzed me, and I stopped before I had gotten very far, and waited to hear what she would say.  But she did not say much; she merely rose, and, turning toward me, exclaimed:  ’No apologies; you are a detective, I suppose?’ And when I nodded, or made some other token that she had guessed correctly, she merely remarked, flashing upon me, however, in a way I do not yet understand:  ’Well, you have got what you desired, and now can go.’  And I went, Byrd, went; and I felt puzzled, I don’t know why, and a little bit sore about the heart, too, as if ­ Well, I can’t even tell what I mean by that if.  The only thing I am sure of is, that Mansell’s cause hasn’t been helped by this day’s job, and that if this lady is asked on the witness stand where she was during the hour every one believed her to be safely shut up with the telescopes and charts, we shall hear ­”

“What?”

“Well, that she was shut up with them, most likely.  Women like her are not to be easily disconcerted even on the witness stand.”

CHAPTER XV - “HE SHALL HEAR ME!”

          There’s some ill planet reigns;
          I must be patient till the heavens look
          With an aspect more favorable. ­WINTER’S TALE.

THE time is midnight, the day the same as that which saw this irruption of Hickory into Professor Darling’s observatory; the scene that of Miss Dare’s own room in the northeast tower.  She is standing before a table with a letter in her hand and a look upon her face that, if seen, would have added much to the puzzlement of the detectives.

The letter was from Mr. Orcutt and ran thus: 

I have seen Mr. Mansell, and have engaged myself to undertake his defence.  When I tell you that out of the hundreds of cases I have tried in my still short life, I have lost but a small percentage, you will understand what this means.

In pursuance to your wishes, I mentioned your name to the prisoner with an intimation that I had a message from you to deliver.  But he stopped me before I could utter a word.  “I receive no communication from Miss Dare!” he declared, and, anxious as I really was to do your bidding, I was compelled to refrain; for his tone was one of hatred and his look that of ineffable scorn.

This was all, but it was enough.  Imogene had read these words over three times, and now was ready to plunge the letter into the flame of a candle to destroy it.  As it burned, her grief and indignation took words: 

“He is alienated, completely alienated,” she gasped; “and I do not wonder.  But,” and here the full majesty of her nature broke forth in one grand gesture, “he shall hear me yet!  As there is a God above, he shall hear me yet, even if it has to be in the open court and in the presence of judge and jury!”