lities; but I
feel strangely lonely and strangely anxious.
Nothing goes just to my mind, and somehow the many
causes for secret fear which I have always had,
assume an undue prominence in my mind. It is
always so when I am not quite well. In vain I
reason with myself, saying that respectable people
do not lightly enter into crime. But there are so
many to whom my death would be more than welcome,
that I constantly see myself in the act of
being----"

"Struck, shot, murdered," suggested Dr. Tredwell, perceiving the young
man's eye lingering over the broken sentence.

"The words are not there," remonstrated Mr. Byrd; but the tone of his
voice showed that his professional complacency had been disturbed at
last.

The other did not answer, but waited with the wisdom of the trapper who
sees the quarry nosing round the toils.

"There is evidently some family mystery," the young man continued,
glancing again at the letter. "But," he remarked, "Mr. Orcutt is a good
friend of hers, and can probably tell us what it all means."

"Very likely," the other admitted, "if we choose to ask him."

Quick as lightning the young man's glance flashed to the coroner's face.

"You would rather not put the question to him?" he inquired.

"No. As he is the lawyer who, in all probability, will be employed by
the criminal in this case, I am sure he would rather not be mixed up in
any preliminary investigation of the affair."

The young man's eye did not waver. He appeared to take a secret resolve.

"Has it not struck you," he insinuated, "that Mr. Orcutt might have
other reasons for not wishing to give any expression of opinion in
regard to it?"

The surprise in the coroner's eye was his best answer.

"No," he rejoined.

Mr. Byrd at once resumed all his old nonchalance.

"The young lady who was here appeared to show such agitated interest in
this horrible crime, I thought that, in kindness to her, he might wish
to keep out of the affair as much as possible."

"Miss Dare? Bless your heart, she would not restrict him in any way. Her
interest in the matter is purely one of curiosity. It has been carried,
perhaps, to a somewhat unusual length for a woman of her position and
breeding. But that is all, I assure you. Miss Dare's eccentricities are
well known in this town."

"Then the diamond ring was really hers?" Mr. Byrd was about to