repressible dismay, "not
because I have any doubts on the subject myself, but because some of the
persons who have unfortunately been witness to your strange and excited
conduct to-day, have presumed to hint that nothing short of a secret
knowledge of the crime or criminal could explain your action upon the
scene of tragedy."

And with a look which, if she had observed it, might have roused her to
a sense of the critical position in which she stood, he paused and held
his breath for her reply.

It did not come.

"Imogene?"

"I hear."

Cold and hard the words sounded--his hand went like lightning to his
heart.

"Are you going to answer?" he asked, at last.

"Yes."

"What is that answer to be, Yes or No?"

She turned upon him her large gray eyes. There was misery in their
depths, but there was a haughtiness, also, which only truth could
impart.

"My answer is No!" said she.

And, without another word, she glided from the room.

Next morning, Mr. Byrd found three notes awaiting his perusal. The first
was a notification from the coroner to the effect that the Widow
Clemmens had quietly breathed her last at midnight. The second, a
hurried line from Mr. Ferris, advising him to make use of the day in
concluding a certain matter of theirs in the next town; and the third, a
letter from Mr. Orcutt, couched in the following terms:

MR. BYRD: _Dear Sir_--I have seen the person named
between us, and I here state, upon my honor, that
she is in possession of no facts which it concerns
the authorities to know.

TREMONT B. ORCUTT.

V.

HORACE BYRD.

But now, I am cabin'd, cribbed, confin'd, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.--MACBETH.

HORACE BYRD was by birth and education a gentleman. He was the son of a
man of small means but great expectations, and had been reared to look
forward to the day when he should be the possessor of a large income.
But his father dying, both means and expectations vanished into thin
air, and at the age of twenty, young Horace found himself thrown upon
the world without income, without business, and, what was still worse,
without those habits of industry that serve a man in such an emergency
better than friends and often better than money itself.

He had also an invalid mother to look after, and two young sisters whom
he loved with warm and devoted affection; and though by