itness back into the other room, asked,
amid the breathless attention of the crowd, whom this bit of by-play had
wrought up to expectation: "Did you observe any one go around to the
back door while you stood there, and go away again without attempting to
knock?"

Mr. Hildreth knitted his brow and seemed to think.

"Answer," persisted the coroner; "it is not a question that requires
thought."

"Well, then, I did not," cried the witness, looking the other directly
in the eye, with the first gleam of real manly feeling which he had yet
displayed.

"You did not see a tramp come into the yard, walk around to the kitchen
door, wait a moment as if hesitating whether he would rap, and then turn
and come back again without doing so?"

"No, sir."

The coroner drew a piece of paper before him and began figuring on it.
Earnestly, almost wildly, the young man watched him, drawing a deep
breath and turning quite pale as the other paused and looked up.

"Yet," affirmed the coroner, as if no delay had occurred since he
received his last answer, "such a person did approach the house while
you were in it, and if you had stood where you say, you must have seen
him."

It was a vital thrust, a relentless presentation of fact, and as such
shook the witness out of his lately acquired composure. Glancing hastily
about, he sought the assistance of some one both capable and willing to
advise him in this crisis, but seeing no one, he made a vigorous effort
and called together his own faculties.

"Sir," he protested, a tremor of undisguised anxiety finding way into
his voice, "I do not see how you make that all out. What proof have you
that this tramp of which you speak came to the house while I was in it?
Could he not have come before? Or, what was better, could he not have
come after?"

The ringing tone with which the last question was put startled
everybody. No such sounds had issued from his lips before. Had he caught
a glimpse of hope, or was he driven to an extremity in his defence that
forced him to assert himself? The eyes of Miss Firman and of a few other
women began to soften, and even the face of Mr. Byrd betrayed that a
change was on the verge of taking place in his feelings.

But the coroner's look and tone dashed cold water on this young and
tender growth of sympathy. Passing over to the witness the paper on
which he had been scribbling, he explained with dry significance:

"It is only a matter of subtraction and addi