see that
bowed form and buried face crouched despairingly above the disfigured
picture. The depths of human misery and the maddening passions that
underlie all crime had been revealed to him for the first time,
perhaps, in all their terrible suggestiveness, and he asked himself over
and over as he tossed on his uneasy pillow, if he possessed the needful
determination to carry on the scheme he had undertaken, in face of the
unreasoning sympathies which the fathomless misery of this young man had
aroused. Under the softening influences of the night, he answered, No;
but when the sunlight came and the full flush of life with its restless
duties and common necessities awoke within him, he decided, Yes.

Mr. Mansell was not at the breakfast-table when Mr. Byrd came down. His
duties at the mill were peremptory, and he had already taken his coffee
and gone. But Mr. Brown was there, and at sight of him Mr. Byrd's
caution took alarm, and he bestowed upon this intrusive busybody a close
and searching scrutiny. It, however, elicited nothing in the way of his
own enlightenment beyond the fact that this fellow, total stranger
though he seemed, was for some inexplicable reason an enemy to himself
or his plans.

Not that Mr. Brown manifested this by any offensive token of dislike or
even of mistrust. On the contrary, he was excessively polite, and let
slip no opportunity of dragging Mr. Byrd into the conversation. Yet, for
all that, a secret influence was already at work against the detective,
and he could not attribute it to any other source than the jealous
efforts of this man. Miss Hart was actually curt to him, and in the
attitude of the various persons about the board he detected a certain
reserve which had been entirely absent from their manner the evening
before.

But while placing, as he thought, due weight upon this fellow's
animosity, he had no idea to what it would lead, till he went up-stairs.
Mrs. Hart, who had hitherto treated him with the utmost cordiality, now
called him into the parlor, and told him frankly that she would be
obliged to him if he would let her have his room. To be sure, she
qualified the seeming harshness of her request by an intimation that a
permanent occupant had applied for it, and offered to pay his board at
the hotel till he could find a room to suit him in another house; but
the fact remained that she was really in a flutter to rid herself of
him, and no subterfuge could hide it, and Mr. Byrd