others knew more of the matter than they, and thus were
more liable to accusation. Occasionally, a low-toned, husky query
would be met by a curt rejoinder suggesting a cautious reticence and a
rising enmity, blockading all investigation save the obligatory
inquisition of a coroner's jury. An object of ever-recurrent scrutiny
was a stranger in the vicinity, who had been subpoenaed also. The
facial effect of culture and sophistication was illustrated in his
inexpressive, controlled, masklike countenance. He was generally known
as the "valley man with the lung complaint," who had built a cabin on
the mountain during the summer, banished hither by the advice of his
physician for the value to the lungs of the soft, healing air. He wore
a brown derby hat, a fawn-colored suit, and a brown overcoat, with the
collar upturned. He was blond and young, and so impassive was his
sober, decorous aspect that the aptest detective could have discerned
naught of significance as he stood, quite silent and composed, in the
centre of the place where it was dry, exempt from the gusts of rain
that the wind now and again flung in spray upon the outermost members
of the group, one hand in the pocket of his trousers, the other
toying with a cigar which so far he held unlighted.

Of the two women present, one, seated upon the beam of a broken
plough, refuse of the agricultural industry long ago collapsed here,
was calmly smoking her pipe,--a wrinkled, unimpressed personality, who
had seen many years, and whose manner might imply that all these
chances of life and death came in the gross, and that existence was a
medley at best. The other, a witness, was young. More than once the
"valley man" cast a covert glance at her as, clad in a brown homespun
dress, she leaned against the log wall, her face, which was very pale,
half turned toward it, as if to hide the features already much
obscured by the white sunbonnet drawn far over it. One arm was lifted,
and her hand was passed between the unchinked logs in a convulsive
grasp upon them. Her figure was tall and slender, and expressive in
its rigid constraint; it was an attitude of despair, of repulsion, of
fear. It might have implied grief, or remorse, or anxiety. Often the
eyes of the prescient victims of circumstantial evidence rested
dubiously upon her. To the great majority of men, the presence of
women in affairs of business is an intrusive evil of times out of
joint. Now, since matters of life and