top of their voices. He heard them, but paid little
attention.

"All about the murder! Latest edition! All about the poison case!"

He felt that he must have a glimpse at a paper, and, entering the office
of an hotel where a man was reading one, he glanced over his shoulder
at the page before him, and was horror-stricken to see the words in
startling headlines--

THE BRENTON MURDER.
_The Autopsy shows that Morphine was the Poison used.
Enough found to have killed a Dozen Men.
Mrs. Brenton arrested for Committing the Horrible
Deed_.

[Illustration: The Brenton Murder.]

CHAPTER IV.

For a moment Brenton was so bewildered and amazed at the awful headlines
which he read, that he could hardly realize what had taken place.
The fact that he had been poisoned, although it gave him a strange
sensation, did not claim his attention as much as might have been
thought. Curiously enough he was more shocked at finding himself, as
it were, the talk of the town, the central figure of a great newspaper
sensation. But the thing that horrified him was the fact that his wife
had been arrested for his murder. His first impulse was to go to her at
once, but he next thought it better to read what the paper said about
the matter, so as to become possessed of all the facts. The headlines,
he said to himself, often exaggerated things, and there was a
possibility that the body of the article would not bear out the naming
announcement above it. But as he read on and on, the situation seemed
to become more and more appalling. He saw that his friends had been
suspicious of his sudden death, and had insisted on a post-mortem
examination. That examination had been conducted by three of the most
eminent physicians of Cincinnati, and the three doctors had practically
agreed that the deceased, in the language of the verdict, had come to
his death through morphia poisoning, and the coroner's jury had brought
in a verdict that "the said William Brenton had been poisoned by some
person unknown." Then the article went on to state how suspicion had
gradually fastened itself upon his wife, and at last her arrest had been
ordered. The arrest had taken place that day.

[Illustration: Mrs. Brenton.]

After reading this, Brenton was in an agony of mind. He pictured his
dainty and beautiful wife in a stone cell in the city prison. He fore