t they had never before seen him. The alertness of
Copenny's guilty conscience sharpened his faculties. His keen eyes
penetrated the disguise of this reputable aspect at once, though he
sedulously kept his own counsel. He heard the details of the death in the
rounds of the mountain gossip, and divined what Clenk's errand had been.
He deemed that the effort to turn State's evidence had met its condign
punishment, and he felt more assured and secure now that it had been
attempted and had failed.

Bayne, however, had scant time to push his investigations here, where
indeed the ground had been previously so thoroughly searched, for he was
summoned away by another lure of a clue far to the northeast. His recent
bitter disappointment, on the verge of a discovery of importance, perhaps
enabled him better to bear in this instance the result of a fruitless
quest, for he had definitely ceased to hope. He had begun to believe the
child was dead. Clenk's words implied no present knowledge of his
seclusion. The allusion to a severe illness suggested possibilities of
relapse, of a weakening of the constitution as much from lack of proper
attention and nourishment as from disease.

On the lonely railway journey from the scene of this latest
disappointment, Bayne was dismayed to note from time to time how blank
were the hours before him, how his invention had flagged! What to do
next, what tortuous path to try, he did not know. Now and again he sought
to spur up his jaded faculties to perceive in the intricate circumstances
of all his futile plans some fibre of a thread, untried hitherto, that
might serve to unravel all this web of mystery. But no! He seemed at the
end. His mind was dull, stagnant; his thoughts were heavy; he was
oblivious of the surroundings. The incidents of the passing moment
scarcely impinged upon his consciousness. He did not share the vexation
of his fellow-passengers when a wreck of freight cars on the track bade
fair to delay the train some hours, awaiting the clearance of the
obstructions. It hardly mattered where he spent the time. He had lost all
interests, all hold on other phases of life, and this that he had made
paramount, essential, baffled and deluded and denied him, and in its
elusiveness it seemed now to have worn him quite out.

Then once more he sought to goad his drooping spirits, to rouse himself
to a keener efficiency. He would not give up the emprise, he declared
again, he would not be conque