charms
as not to recognize my wife as a woman deserving of every consideration.

"But I had counted without my host. When, two days after the ceremony
which had made us one, I took her to the house which has since become so
unhappily notorious, I found that my brother had but shown me one facet,
and that the least obdurate, of his many-sided nature.

"Brilliant as steel, he was as hard, and not only professed himself
unmoved by my wife's many charms, but also as totally out of sympathy
with such follies as love and marriage, which were, he said, the fruit
of unoccupied minds and a pastime wholly unworthy of men boasting of
such talents and attainments as ourselves. Then he turned his back upon
us, and I, moved by an anger little short of frenzy, began an abuse for
which he was so little prepared that he crouched like a man under blows,
and, losing minute by minute his self-control, finally caught up a
dagger lying close at hand, and crying, 'You want my money? Well, then,
take it!' stabbed himself to the heart with one desperate blow.

"I fear I shall not be believed, but that is the story of this crime,
gentlemen."

CHAPTER XIII.

DESPAIR.

Was it? Tragedies as unpremeditated as this had doubtless occurred, and
inconsistencies in character shown themselves in similar impetuosities,
from the beginning of time up till now. Yet there was not a man present,
with or without the memory of Bartow's pantomime, which, as you will
recall, did not tally at all with this account of Mr. Adams's violent
end, who did not show in a greater or less degree his distrust and
evident disbelief in this tale, poured out with such volubility before
them.

The young man, gifted as he was with the keenest susceptibilities,
perceived this, and his head drooped.

"I shall add nothing to and take nothing from what I have said," was his
dogged remark. "Make of it what you will."

The inspector who was conducting the inquiry glanced dubiously at Mr.
Gryce as these words left Thomas Adams's lips; whereupon the detective
said:

"We are sorry you have taken such a resolution. There are many things
yet left to be explained, Mr. Adams; for instance, why, if your brother
slew himself in this unforeseen manner, you left the house so
precipitately, without giving an alarm or even proclaiming your
relationship to him?"

"You need not answer, you know," the inspector's voice broke in. "No man
is called upon to incriminate himself in th