at in the sight of God he was a murderer made Blair
collapse during the day. He was confined to his room; and it was then
that he told the Fort Benton physician all that was haunting him, hour
by hour. Blair did not attempt to palliate his sin, and although the
doctor had known much and suspected more, he could hardly find it in his
heart to forgive either Winifred's brother or the woman who had led him
on. The only ray of mercy he felt was that matters were not so bad as he
had feared between these old friends of his; but in his bitterness at
Arthur's death, he would not give Blair the consolation of knowing that
it was only a question of a short time, at best, when the judge's weak
heart must have failed. Let him suffer! Arthur had! For the first time
the lenient doctor did not want to relieve pain. Neither he nor Blair
knew of what had taken place between Eva and her husband after Charlie
had left their rooms.

The doctor's bitterness, however, was as nothing to the inward storm
which shook Danvers when Eva, in the height of her hysterical remorse
and fear of exposure, told him the sorry tale of her first flutterings
around the arc-light of Mr. Burroughs' ambition; of her consent to aid
Mr. Moore in his efforts to influence uncertain legislators to vote for
Burroughs, and that gentleman's acceptance thereof; of the clandestine
meetings in her apartments with the Honorable William, and of the more
open but far less harmless friendship with Senator Blair, pursued until
she was singed with the flame of her own kindling and nearly consumed by
its fires. And lastly, her husband's reproaches; her miserable evasions
and the hurt that she had deliberately given him. When she told her
silent listener of that last half hour Danvers held himself forcibly in
his fear of doing the woman bodily harm. That she should have done this
cruel thing! Her indiscretions had been bad enough, but they had been
prompted by an ambition second only to Mr. Burroughs'. But to turn the
knife wantonly in Arthur's heart of gold!... How nearly his friend had
gone from him, believing that he was false!... And now he was dead!...
dead!

Philip's agony broke its restraint, and Mrs. Latimer never forgot his
scathing denunciation.

"You killed Arthur," he concluded, white to the lips, "as surely as if
you used a stiletto! So that was what Arthur meant." For a few moments
Danvers could not speak as the recollection of that look of love and
trust came su