eed, has taken steps to conceal it, and so far succeeded.
It remains to be seen whether his astuteness will serve against the
search to be resumed on the morrow.

Two questions in chief, correlative, occupy them: "Who killed Clancy?"
and "What has been the motive for killing him?"

To the former, none of them would have thought of answering "Dick
Darke,"--that is when starting out on the search near noon.

Now that night is on, and they have returned from it, his name is on
every lip. At first only in whispers, and guarded insinuations; but
gradually pronounced in louder tone, and bolder speech--this approaching
accusation.

Still the second question remains unanswered:--

"Why should Dick Darke have killed Charley Clancy?"

Even put in this familiar form it receives no reply. It is an enigma to
which no one present holds the key. For none know aught of a rivalry
having existed between the two men--much less a love-jealousy, than
which no motive more inciting to murder ever beat in human breast.

Darke's partiality for Colonel Armstrong's eldest daughter has been no
secret throughout the settlement. He himself, childishly, in his cups,
long since made all scandal-mongers acquainted with that. But Clancy,
of higher tone, if not more secretive habit, has kept his love-affair to
himself; influenced by the additional reason of its being clandestine.

Therefore, those, sitting up as company to his afflicted parent, have no
knowledge of the tender relations that existed between him and Helen
Armstrong, any more than of their being the cause of that disaster for
which the widow now weeps.

She herself alone knows of them; but, in the first moment of her
misfortune, completely prostrated by it, she has not yet communicated
aught of this to the sympathetic ears around her. It is a family
secret, too sacred for their sympathy; and, with some last lingering
pride of superior birth, she keeps it to herself. The time has not come
for disclosing it.

But it soon will--she knows that. All must needs be told. For, after
the first throes of the overwhelming calamity, in which her thoughts
alone dwelt on the slain son, they turned towards him suspected as the
slayer. In her case with something stronger than suspicion--indeed
almost belief, based on her foreknowledge of the circumstances; these
not only accounting for the crime, but pointing to the man who must have
committed it.

As she lies upon her couch, with te