ctives had resulted
in nothing more. There was not sufficient evidence to warrant accusing
any one else, and that against Harry Bartlett was of so slender and
circumstantial a character that it could not be held to have any real
value before the grand jury nor in a trial court.

"What is your motion, then?" asked the coroner.

"Well, I don't know that I have any motion to make," said Mr. Stryker.
"If this were before a county judge, and the prisoner's counsel demanded
it, I should have to agree to a nolle pros. As it is I simply say I have
no other evidence to offer at this time."

"Then the jury may consider that already before it?" asked Billy Teller.

"Yes."

"You have heard what the prosecutor said, gentlemen," went on the
coroner. "You may retire and consider your verdict."

This they did, for fifteen minutes--fifteen nerve-racking minutes for
more than one in the improvised courtroom. Then the twelve men filed
back, and in answer to the usual questions the foreman announced:

"We find that Horace Carwell came to his death through poison
administered by a person, or persons, unknown."

There was silence for a moment, and then, as Bartlett started from his
seat, a flush mantling his pale face, Viola, with a murmured "Thank
God!" fainted.

CHAPTER XX. A MEETING

Harry Bartlett walked from the court a free man, physically, but not
mentally. He felt, and others did also, that there was a stain on
him--something unexplained, and which he would not, or could not, clear
up--the quarrel with Mr. Carwell just before the latter's death. And
even to Viola, when, in the seclusion of her home, she asked Harry about
it after the trial, or rather, the verdict, he replied:

"I can not tell. It was nothing that concerns you or me or this case. I
will never tell."

And Colonel Ashley, hearing this, pondered over it more and more.

The little green book was all but forgotten during these days, and as
for the rods, lines, and reels, Shag arranged them, polished them and
laid them out, in hourly expectation of being called on for them, but
the call did not come. The colonel was after bigger fish than dwelt in
the sea or the rivers that ran into the sea.

It was a week after the rather unsatisfactory verdict of the coroner's
jury that Bartlett, out in his "Spanish Omelet," came most unexpectedly
on Captain Gerry Poland, some fifty miles from Lakeside. The captain was
in his big machine, and he seemed surprised on