pectful bow.

"You can, then, have no doubts of his ability to prove an _alibi_?"

"I have no doubts concerning Mr. Mansell," was the stern and
uncompromising reply.

Mr. Byrd at once felt he had received his dismissal. But before making
up his mind to go, he resolved upon one further effort. Calling to his
aid his full power of acting, he slowly shook his head with a thoughtful
air, and presently murmured half aloud and half, as it were, to himself:

"I thought, possibly, he might have gone to Washington." Then, with a
casual glance at Mr. Goodman, added: "He is an inventor, I believe?"

"Yes," was again the laconic response.

"Has he not a machine at present which he desires to bring to the notice
of some capitalist?"

"I believe he has," was the forced and none too amiable answer.

Mr. Byrd at once leaned confidingly forward.

"Don't you think," he asked, "that he may have gone to New York to
consult with some one about this pet hobby of his? It would certainly be
a natural thing for him to do, and if I only knew it was so, I could go
back to Sibley with an easy conscience."

His disinterested air, and the tone of kindly concern which he had
adopted, seemed at last to produce its effect on his companion. Relaxing
a trifle of his austerity, Mr. Goodman went so far as to admit that Mr.
Mansell had told him that business connected with his patent had called
him out of town; but beyond this he would allow nothing; and Mr. Byrd,
baffled in his attempts to elicit from this man any distinct
acknowledgment of Mr. Mansell's whereabouts at the critical time of Mrs.
Clemmens' death, made a final bow and turned toward the door.

It was only at this moment he discovered that Mr. Goodman and himself
had not been alone in the room; that curled up in one of the
window-seats was a little girl of some ten or twelve years of age, who
at the first tokens of his taking his departure slipped shyly down to
the floor and ran before him out into the hall. He found her by the
front door when he arrived there. She was standing with her hand on the
knob, and presented such a picture of childish eagerness, tempered by
childish timidity, that he involuntarily paused before her with a smile.
She needed no further encouragement.

"Oh, sir, I know about Mr. Mansell!" she cried. "He wasn't in that place
you talk about, for he wrote a letter to papa just the day before he
came back, and the postmark on the envelope was Monteith. I remembe