ight
hall; and as he watched them a tear ran down his face. But as soon as
they were out of sight he turned and walked hastily toward his room,
beginning to hope again, already planning a new statement.

Outside the building the two men stood still, and the journalist's
companion looked up curiously at the long monotonous rows of barred
windows.

"So that was Granice?"

"Yes--that was Granice, poor devil," said McCarren.

"Strange case! I suppose there's never been one just like it? He's still
absolutely convinced that he committed that murder?"

"Absolutely. Yes."

The stranger reflected. "And there was no conceivable ground for the
idea? No one could make out how it started? A quiet conventional sort of
fellow like that--where do you suppose he got such a delusion? Did you
ever get the least clue to it?"

McCarren stood still, his hands in his pockets, his head cocked up in
contemplation of the barred windows. Then he turned his bright hard gaze
on his companion.

"That was the queer part of it. I've never spoken of it--but I DID get a
clue."

"By Jove! That's interesting. What was it?"

McCarren formed his red lips into a whistle. "Why--that it wasn't a
delusion."

He produced his effect--the other turned on him with a pallid stare.

"He murdered the man all right. I tumbled on the truth by the merest
accident, when I'd pretty nearly chucked the whole job."

"He murdered him--murdered his cousin?"

"Sure as you live. Only don't split on me. It's about the queerest
business I ever ran into... DO ABOUT IT? Why, what was I to do? I
couldn't hang the poor devil, could I? Lord, but I was glad when they
collared him, and had him stowed away safe in there!"

The tall man listened with a grave face, grasping Granice's statement in
his hand.

"Here--take this; it makes me sick," he said abruptly, thrusting the
paper at the reporter; and the two men turned and walked in silence to
the gates.

The End

THE DILETTANTE

As first published in Harper's Monthly, December 1903

It was on an impulse hardly needing the arguments he found himself
advancing in its favor, that Thursdale, on his way to the club, turned
as usual into Mrs. Vervain's street.

The "as usual" was his own qualification of the act; a convenient way
of bridging the interval--in days and other sequences--that lay
between this visit and the last. It was characteristic of him that he
instinctively excluded his call two days e