you
have said; but that was on the day previous to her murder, and not after
it. I went to see her for the purpose of again urging the claims of my
invention upon her. I went secretly, and by the roundabout way you
describe, because I had another purpose in visiting Sibley, which made
it expedient for me to conceal my presence in the town. I failed in my
efforts to enlist the sympathies of my aunt in regard to my plans, and I
failed also in compassing that other desire of my heart of which the
ring you mention was a token. Both failures unnerved me, and I lay in
that hut all night. I even lay there most of the next morning; but I did
not see my aunt again, and I did not lift my hand against her life."

There was indescribable quiet in the tone, but there was indescribable
power also, and the look he levelled upon the District Attorney was
unwaveringly solemn and hard.

"You deny, then, that you entered the widow's house on the morning of
the murder?"

"I do."

"It is, then, a question of veracity between you and Miss Dare?"

Silence.

"She asserts she gave you back the ring you offered her. If this is so,
and that ring was in your possession after you left her on Monday
evening, how came it to be in the widow's dining-room the next morning,
if you did not carry it there?"

"I can only repeat my words," rejoined Mr. Mansell.

The District Attorney replied impatiently. For various reasons he did
not wish to believe this man guilty.

"You do not seem very anxious to assist me in my endeavors to reach the
truth," he observed. "Cannot you tell me what you did with the ring
after you left Miss Dare? Whether you put it on your finger, or thrust
it into your pocket, or tossed it into the marsh? If you did not carry
it to the house, some one else must have done so, and you ought to be
able to help us in determining who."

But Mr. Mansell shortly responded:

"I have nothing to say about the ring. From the moment Miss Dare
returned it to me, as you say, it was, so far as I am concerned, a thing
forgotten. I do not know as I should ever have thought of it again, if
you had not mentioned it to me to-day. How it vanished from my
possession only to reappear upon the scene of murder, some more clever
conjurer than myself must explain."

"And this is all you have to say, Mr. Mansell?"

"This is all I have to say."

"Byrd," suggested the District Attorney, after a long pause, during
which the subject of his suspicions