case and was inquisitively peering at its
title-page.

CHAPTER VII. THE DOUBLE TRAIL

Pemberton Bryce was not the only person in Wrychester who was watching
Ransford with keen attention during these events. Mary Bewery, a young
woman of more than usual powers of observation and penetration, had been
quick to see that her guardian's distress over the affair in Paradise
was something out of the common. She knew Ransford for an exceedingly
tender-hearted man, with a considerable spice of sentiment in his
composition: he was noted for his more than professional interest in the
poorer sort of his patients and had gained a deserved reputation in the
town for his care of them. But it was somewhat surprising, even to Mary,
that he should be so much upset by the death of a total stranger as to
lose his appetite, and, for at any rate a couple of days, be so restless
that his conduct could not fail to be noticed by herself and her
brother. His remarks on the tragedy were conventional enough--a most
distressing affair--a sad fate for the poor fellow--most unexplainable
and mysterious, and so on--but his concern obviously went beyond that.
He was ill at ease when she questioned him about the facts; almost
irritable when Dick Bewery, schoolboy-like, asked him concerning
professional details; she was sure, from the lines about his eyes and a
worn look on his face, that he had passed a restless night when he came
down to breakfast on the morning of the inquest. But when he returned
from the inquest she noticed a change--it was evident, to her ready
wits, that Ransford had experienced a great relief. He spoke of relief,
indeed, that night at dinner, observing that the verdict which the jury
had returned had cleared the air of a foul suspicion; it would have
been no pleasant matter, he said, if Wrychester Cathedral had gained an
unenviable notoriety as the scene of a murder.

"All the same," remarked Dick, who knew all the talk of the town,
"Varner persists in sticking to what he's said all along. Varner
says--said this afternoon, after the inquest was over--that he's
absolutely certain of what he saw, and that he not only saw a hand in
a white cuff and black coat sleeve, but that he saw the sun gleam for
a second on the links in the cuff, as if they were gold or diamonds.
Pretty stiff evidence that, sir, isn't it?"

"In the state of mind in which Varner was at that moment," replied
Ransford, "he wouldn't be very well able to