e. It was a most convincing
chain of circumstantial evidence.

Considering the data that had come to light, there seemed to be only one
alternative, and that was that Cat-Eye Mose had committed the murder. I
clung tenaciously to this belief; but I found, in the absence of any
further proof or any conceivable motive, that few people shared it with
me. The marks of his bare feet proved conclusively that he had been, in
whatever capacity, an active participator in the struggle.

"He was there to aid his master," the sheriff affirmed, "and being a
witness to the crime, it was necessary to put him out of the way."

"Why hide the body of one and not the other?" I asked.

"To throw suspicion on Mose."

This was the universal opinion; no one, from the beginning, would listen
to a word against Mose. In his case, as well as in Radnor's, the past
was speaking. Through all his life, they said, he had faithfully loved
and served the Colonel, and if necessity required, he would willingly
have died for him.

But for myself, I continued to believe in the face of all opposition,
that Mose was guilty. It was more a matter of feeling with me than of
reasoning. I had always been suspicious of the fellow; a man with eyes
like that was capable of anything. The objection which the sheriff
raised that Colonel Gaylord was both larger and stronger than Mose and
could easily have overcome him, proved nothing to my mind. Mose was a
small man, but he was long-armed and wirey, doubtless far stronger than
he looked; besides, he had been armed, and the nature of his weapon was
clear. The floor of the cave was strewn with scores of broken
stalactites; nothing could have made a more formidable weapon than one
of these long pieces of jagged stone used as a club.

As to the motive for the crime, who could tell what went on in the slow
workings of his mind? The Colonel had struck him more than
once--unjustly, I did not doubt--and though he seemed at the moment to
take it meekly, might he not have been merely biding his time? His final
revenge may have been the outcome of many hoarded grievances that no one
knew existed. The fellow was more than half insane. What more likely
than that he had attacked his master in a fit of animal passion; and
then, terrified at the result, escaped to the woods? That seemed to me
the only plausible explanation.

No facts had come out concerning the ha'nt or the robbery, and I do not
think that either was connected i