chen door. You won't let on I found it, honey? You
won't tell nobody?"

He reassured her, and hastened to his room. Lighting his lamp, he
hurriedly changed his coat for a heavier, and was starting in hot
haste for the door when his eyes fell upon the pistol, which he had
laid on the table.

It was a fine, pearl-handled revolver, thirty-eight caliber. He looked
at it closer, then stared blankly at the floor. He had seen it before
that afternoon.

"Why, Carter must have given Ricks the pistol," he thought. "But
Carter was out at the Junction. What time did it happen?"

He sat on the side of the bed and, pressing his hands to his temples,
tried to force the events to take their proper sequence.

"I don't know when I left town," he thought, with a shudder; "it must
have been nearly four when I met Carter and Annette. He took the train
back. Yes, he would have had time to help Ricks. But I saw Ricks out
the turnpike. It was half-past five, I remember now. The doctor said
the judge was shot at a quarter of six."

A startled look of comprehension flashed over his face. He sprang to
his feet and tramped up and down the small room.

"I know I saw Ricks," he thought, his brain seething with excitement.
"Annette saw him, too; she described him. He couldn't have even driven
back in that time."

He stopped again and stood staring intently before him. Then he took
the lamp and slipped down the back stairs and out the side door.

The snow was trampled about the window and for some space beyond it.
The tracks had been followed to the river, the eager searchers keeping
well away from the tell-tale footsteps in order not to obliterate
them. Sandy knelt in the snow and held his lamp close to the single
trail. The print was narrow and long and ended in a tapering toe.
Ricks's broad foot would have covered half the space again. He jumped
to his feet and started for the house, then turned back irresolute.

When he entered his little room again the slender footprints had been
effaced. He put the lamp on the bureau, and looked vacantly about him.
On the cushion was pinned a note. He recognized Ruth's writing, and
opened it mechanically.

There were only three lines:

I must see you again before I leave. Be sure to come to-night.

The words scarcely carried a meaning to him. It was her brother that
had shot the judge--the brother whom she had defended and protected
all her life. It would kill her when she knew. And he, Sand