hey were about to separate.

"Possibly," replied the other, gravely. Then added, with a smile,
"Mr. Whitney has his own preconceived ideas of the case and tries
to adapt the circumstances to suit them, when, in reality, one must
first ascertain whatever facts are available and adjust his theories
accordingly."

They parted company at the door of the stables, but Scott had not
reached the house when the detective, with a peculiar smile,
returned to the room up-stairs, and once more opening the box, drew
forth from underneath the satin linings a folded paper, yellow with
age and covered with closely written lines; which he read with great
interest, after which he remained absorbed in thought until aroused
by the entrance of his friend, the coachman.

Several hours later Scott stood alone beside the casket of the
murdered man. The head had been turned slightly to one side and a
spray of white blossoms, dropped with seeming carelessness within
the casket, concealed all traces of the ghastly wound, their snowy
petals scarcely whiter than the marble features of the dead.

It lacked more than an hour of the time set for the funeral. None
of the few invited friends would arrive for some time yet. The
gentlemen of the house were still in the hands of their valets, and
the ladies engrossed with the details of their elegant mourning
costumes. Scott, knowing he would be secure from interruption, had
chosen this opportunity to take his farewell look at the face of his
employer, desiring to be alone with his own thoughts beside the dead.

With strangely commingled emotions he gazed upon the face, so
familiar, and yet upon which the death angel had already traced many
unfamiliar lines, and as he realized the utter loneliness of the
rich man, both in life and in death, a wave of intense pity swept
across heart and brain, well-nigh obliterating all sense of personal
wrong and injury.

"Unhappy man!" he murmured. "Unloved in life, unmourned in death!
Not one of those whom you sought to enrich will look upon you to-day
with one-half the sorrow or the pity with which I do, whom you have
wronged and defrauded from the day of my birth! But I forgive you
the wrong you have done me. It was slight compared with the far
greater wrong you did another,--your brother--your only brother!
A wrong which no sums of money, however vast, could ever repair.
What would I not give if I could once have stood by his side, even
as I stand by yo