supposed author,--a man who had come
and gone in these rooms with a spell of fascination to which many of
those present had themselves succumbed--the brooding sense of illness,
if not of impending death, in the room above; gave to these services a
peculiar poignancy which in some breasts of greater susceptibility than
the rest, took the form of a vague expectancy bordering on terror.

Sweetwater felt the poignancy, but did not suffer from the terror. His
attention had been attracted in a new direction, and he found himself
watching, with anxious curiosity, the attitude and absorbed expression of
a good-looking young man whom he was far from suspecting to be the secret
representative of the present suspect, whom nobody could forget, yet whom
nobody wished to remember at this hallowed hour.

Had this attitude and this absorption been directed towards the casket
over which the clergyman's words rose and fell with ever increasing
impressiveness, he might have noted the man but would scarcely have been
held by him. But this interest, sincere and strong as it undoubtedly was,
centred not so much in the services, careful as he was to maintain a
decorous attitude towards the same, but in the faint murmurs which now
and then came down from above where unconsciousness reigned and the
stricken brother watched over the delirious sister, with a concentration
and abandonment to fear which made him oblivious of all other duties, and
almost as unconscious of the rites then being held below over one who had
been as a mother to him, as the sick girl herself with her ceaseless and
importunate "Lila! Lila!" The detective, watching this preoccupied
stranger, shared in some measure his secret emotions, and thus was
prepared for the unexpected occurrence of a few minutes later.

No one else had the least forewarning of any break in the services. There
had been nothing in the subdued but impressive rendering of the prayers
to foreshadow a dramatic episode; yet it came, and in this manner:

The final words had been said, and the friends present invited to look
their last on the calm face which, to many there, had never worn so sweet
a smile in life. Some had hesitated; but most had obeyed the summons,
among them Sweetwater. But he had not much time in which to fix those
features in his mind; for the little girls, who had been waiting
patiently for this moment, now came forward; and he stepped aside to
watch them as they filed by, dropping as