e of resolve in
the eyes I saw sinking slowly before mine.

"I will not acknowledge it," he muttered; adding, however, in what was
little short of a growl: "Not yet, not till it becomes my duty to avenge
innocent blood."

"You foretold the date."

"Drop it."

"You were in league with the abductor," I persisted. "I declare to your
face, in spite of all the vaunted scruples with which you seek to blind
me to your guilt, that you were in league with the abductor, knowing
what money Mrs. Ocumpaugh would pay. Only he was too smart for you, and
perhaps too unscrupulous. You would stop short of murder, now that you
have got religion. But his conscience is not so nice and so you fear--"

"You do not know what I fear and I am not going to tell you. It is
enough that I am conscious of my own uprightness and that I say, Find
the child! You have incentive enough."

It was true and it was growing stronger every minute.

"Confine yourself to such clues as are apparent to every eye," he now
admonished me with an eagerness that seemed real. "If they are pointed
by some special knowledge you believe yourself to have gained, that is
all the better--perhaps. I do not propose to say."

I saw that he had uttered his ultimatum.

"Very good," said I. "I have, nevertheless, one more question to ask
which relates to those very clues. You can not refuse to answer it if
you are really desirous of aiding me in my efforts. Where did you first
come upon the wagon which you followed so many hours in the belief that
it held Gwendolen Ocumpaugh?"

He mused a moment with downcast head, his nervous frame trembling with
the force with which he threw his whole weight on the hand he held
outspread on the table before him. Then he calmly replied:

"I will tell you that. At the gate of Mrs. Carew's grounds. You know
them? They adjoin the Ocumpaughs' on the left."

My surprise made me lower my head but not so quickly that I did not
catch the oblique glint of his eye as he mentioned the name which I was
so little prepared to hear in this connection.

"I was in my buggy on the highroad," he continued. "There was a constant
passing by of all kinds of vehicles on their way to and from the
Ocumpaugh entertainment, but none that attracted my attention till I
caught sight of the covered wagon I have endeavored to describe, being
driven out of the adjoining grounds. Then I pricked up my ears, for a
child was crying inside in the smothered way that tell