it's all so terrible!"

But there were other terrors to come.

Following his plan of acting merely as a guest and an old friend of the
family who had journeyed from afar to attend the funeral, Colonel
Ashley went about as silent as though on a fishing trip. He looked and
listened, but said little. He was not yet ready for a cast. He was but
inspecting the stream--several streams, in fact, to see where he could
best toss in his baited hook.

And it was in this same spirit that he attended the coroner's inquest,
which was held in the town hall. Over the deliberations, which were, at
best, rather informal, Coroner Billy Teller presided.

The office of coroner was, in Lakeside, as in most New Jersey cities or
towns, much of an empty title. At every election the names of certain
men were put on the ticket to be voted for as coroners.

Few took the trouble to ballot for them, scarcely any one against them,
and they were automatically inducted into office by reason of a few
votes.

Just what their functions were few knew and less cared. There used to
be a rumor, perhaps it is current yet in many Jersey counties, that a
coroner was the only official who could legally arrest the sheriff in
case that official needed taking into custody. As to the truth of this
it is not important.

Certain it is that Billy Teller had never before found himself in such
demand and prominence. He was to act in the capacity of judge, though
the verdict in the case, providing one could be returned, would be given
by the jury he might impanel.

There was a large throng in attendance at the town hall when the inquest
began. Reporters had been sent out by metropolitan papers, for Horace
Carwell was a well known figure in the sporting and the financial world,
and the mere fact that there was a suspicion that his death was not from
natural causes was enough to make it a good story.

Billy Teller was, frankly, unacquainted with the method of procedure,
and he confessed as much to the prosecutor, an astute lawyer. As the
latter would have the conducting of the case for the state in case it
came to a trial in the upper courts, Mr. Stryker saw to it that legal
forms were followed in the selection of a jury and the swearing in of
the members of the panel. Then began the taking of testimony.

The doctors told of the finding of evidences of poison in Mr. Carwell's
body. Its nature was as yet undetermined, for it was not of the common
type.

This muc