er, General Herbert!" said North.

But the general followed him into the stone arched vestibule.

"It's a fine night for your walk,--but you're quite sure you don't want
to be driven into town?"

"No, no,--good night." And North held out his hand.

"Good night."

North went down the carriageway, and Herbert reentered the house.

North kept to the beaten path for a little while, then left it and
tramped out across the fields until he came to a strip of woodland that
grew along a stony hillside. He followed this ridge back a short
distance and presently emerged upon a sloping meadow that overhung a
narrow ravine. Not two hundred yards distant loomed Idle Hour, somber
and dark and massive. He found a stump on the edge of the woods and
brushed the snow from it, then drawing his overcoat closely about him,
he sat down and lit his pipe.

The windows of Idle Hour still showed their many lights. At his feet a
thread-like stream, swollen by the recent rains, splashed and murmured
ceaselessly. He sat there a long time silent and absorbed, watching the
lights, until at last they vanished from the drawing-room and the
library. Then other lights appeared behind curtained windows on the
second floor. These in their turn were extinguished, and Idle Hour sank
deeper into the shadows as the crescent moon slipped behind the horizon.

"God bless her!" North said aloud.

He knocked the ashes from his pipe, and retraced his steps to the drive.
He had but turned from this into the public road when he heard the
clatter of wheels and the beat of hoofs, and a rapidly driven team swung
around a bend in the road in front of him. He stepped aside to let it
pass, but the driver pulled up abreast of him with a loud command to his
horses.

"Heard the news?" he asked, leaning out over the dash-board of his
buggy.

"What news?" asked North.

"Oh, I guess you haven't heard!" said the stranger. "Well, old man
McBride, the hardware merchant, is dead! Murdered!"

"Murdered!" cried North.

"Yes, sir,--murdered! They found him in his store this evening a little
after six. No one knows who did it. Well, good night, I thought maybe
you'd like to know. Awful, ain't it?"

CHAPTER EIGHT

A GAMBLER AT HOME

It was morning, and Mr. Gilmore sat by his cheerful open fire in that
front room of his, where by night were supposed to flourish those games
of chance which were such an offense to the "better element" in Mount
Hope. Mr. Gilmore