r, with something of a serious and engrossing
nature upon his mind, or else he was an amateur, who for some reason was
acting the part of a detective without either the skill or experience of
one.

Whichever theory might be true, this gentleman was a person who at this
time and in this place was well worth watching: that is, if a man had
any reason for interesting himself in the pursuit of possible clues to
the mystery of Mrs. Clemmens' murder. But Mr. Byrd felt that he no
longer possessed a professional right to such interest; so, leaving
behind him this fine-looking gentleman, together with all the inevitable
conjectures which the latter's peculiar manner had irresistibly
awakened, he proceeded to regain his room and enter upon that
contemplation of the picture he had just made, which was naturally
demanded by his regard for one of the persons there depicted.

It was a vigorous sketch, and the slow blush crept up and dyed Mr.
Byrd's forehead as he gazed at it and realized the perfection of the
likeness he had drawn of Miss Dare. Yes, that was her form, her face,
her expression, her very self. She it was and no other who had been the
heroine of the strange scene enacted that day in the Syracuse depot; a
scene to which, by means of this impromptu sketch, he had now become as
nearly a witness as any one could hope for who had not been actually
upon the spot. Strange! And he had been so anxious to know what had
altered the mind of this lady and sent her back to Sibley before her
journey was half completed--had pondered so long and vainly upon the
whys and wherefores of an action whose motive he had never expected to
understand, but which he now saw suggested in a scene that seriously
whetted, if it did not thoroughly satisfy, his curiosity.

The moment he had chosen to portray was that in which the eyes of the
two met and their first instinctive recoil took place. Turning his
attention from the face of the lady and bestowing it upon that of the
man, he perceived there the horror and shrinking which he had imprinted
so successfully upon hers. That the expression was true, though the
countenance was not, he had no doubt. The man, whatever his name,
nature, calling, or history, recoiled from a meeting with Imogene Dare
as passionately as she did from one with him. Both had started from home
with a simultaneous intention of seeking the other, and yet, at the
first recognition of this fact, both had started and drawn back as