nfronted me, amid which the twelve stolid
countenances of the jury looked like old friends. Howard Van Burnam was
the witness called, and as he came forward and stood in full view of us
all, the interest of the occasion reached its climax.

His countenance wore a reckless look that did not serve to prepossess
him with the people at whose mercy he stood. But he did not seem to
care, and waited for the Coroner's questions with an air of ease which
was in direct contrast to the drawn and troubled faces of his father and
brother just visible in the background.

Coroner Dahl surveyed him a few minutes before speaking, then he quietly
asked if he had seen the dead body of the woman who had been found lying
under a fallen piece of furniture in his father's house.

He replied that he had.

"Before she was removed from the house or after it?"

"After."

"Did you recognize it? Was it the body of any one you know?"

"I do not think so."

"Has your wife, who was missing yesterday, been heard from yet, Mr. Van
Burnam?"

"Not to my knowledge, sir."

"Had she not--that is, your wife--a complexion similar to that of the
dead woman just alluded to?"

"She had a fair skin and brown hair, if that is what you mean. But these
attributes are common to too many women for me to give them any weight
in an attempted identification of this importance."

"Had they no other similar points of a less general character? Was not
your wife of a slight and graceful build, such as is attributed to the
subject of this inquiry?"

"My wife was slight and she was graceful, common attributes also."

"And your wife had a scar?"

"Yes."

"On the left ankle?"

"Yes."

"Which the deceased also has?"

"That I do not know. They say so, but I had no interest in looking."

"Why, may I ask? Did you not think it a remarkable coincidence?"

The young man frowned. It was the first token of feeling he had given.

"I was not on the look-out for coincidences," was his cold reply. "I had
no reason to think this unhappy victim of an unknown man's brutality my
wife, and so did not allow myself to be moved by even such a fact as
this."

"You had no reason," repeated the Coroner, "to think this woman your
wife. Had you any reason to think she was not?"

"Yes."

"Will you give us that reason?"

"I had more than one. First, my wife would never wear the clothes I saw
on the girl whose dead body was shown to me. Secondly, she would never
go to any