and stood a few minutes
moodily watching the _reflets_ of the crinkled leather as the
afternoon sunshine struck across it. Beneath his amazement and
indignation he had been chilled to the bone by Mr. Taggett's brutal
confidence. It was enough to chill one, surely; and in spite of
himself Mr. Slocum began to feel a certain indefinable dread of that
little crimson-bound book.

Whatever it contained, the reading of those pages was to be a
repellent task to him; it was a task to which he could not bring
himself at the moment; to-night, in the privacy of his own chamber,
he would sift Mr. Taggett's baleful fancies. Thus temporizing, Mr.
Slocum dropped the volume into his pocket, locked the office door
behind him, and wandered down to Dundon's drug-store to kill the
intervening hour before supper-time. Dundon's was the aristocratic
lounging place of the village,--the place where the only genuine
Havana cigars in Stillwater were to be had, and where the favored
few, the initiated, could get a dash of hochheimer or cognac with
their soda-water.

At supper, that evening, Mr. Slocum addressed scarcely a word to
Margaret, and Margaret was also silent. The days were dragging
heavily with her; she was missing Richard. Her own daring travels had
never extended beyond Boston or Providence; and New York, with
Richard in it, seemed drearily far away. Mr. Slocum withdrew to his
chamber shortly after nine o'clock, and, lighting the pair of candles
on the dressing-table, began his examination of Mr. Taggett's
memoranda.

At midnight the watchman on his lonely beat saw those two candles
still burning.

XX

Mr. Taggett's diary was precisely a diary,--disjoined, full of
curt, obscure phrases and irrelevant reflections,--for which reason
it will not be reproduced here. Though Mr. Slocum pondered every
syllable, and now and then turned back painfully to reconsider some
doubtful passage, it is not presumed that the reader will care to do
so. An abstract of the journal, with occasional quotation where the
writer's words seem to demand it, will be sufficient for the
narrative.

In the opening pages Mr. Taggett described his novel surroundings
with a minuteness which contrasted oddly with the brief, hurried
entries further on. He found himself, as he had anticipated, in a
society composed of some of the most heterogeneous elements.
Stillwater, viewed from a certain point, was a sort of microcosm, a
little international rag-fair t