expression began to touch
Margaret; there was something that appealed to her in the thin gray
hair fallowing over his forehead. Her eyes softened as they rested
upon him, and a pitying little tremor came to her under lip.

"Papa," she said, stooping to his side, with a sudden rosy bloom
in her cheeks, "I have all the proof I want that Richard knew nothing
of this dreadful business."

"You have proof!" exclaimed Mr. Slocum, starting from his seat.

"Yes. The morning Richard went to New York"--Margaret hesitated.

"Well!"

"He put his arm around me and kissed me."

"Well!"

"Well?" repeated Margaret. "Could Richard have done that,--could
he have so much as laid his hand upon me--if--if"--

Mr. Slocum sunk back in the chair with a kind of groan.

"Papa, you do not know him!"

"Oh, Margaret, I am afraid that that is not the kind of evidence
to clear Richard in Mr. Taggett's eyes."

"Then Richard's word must do it," she said haughtily. "He will be
home to-night."

"Yes, he is to return to-night," said Mr. Slocum, looking away
from her.

XXII

During the rest of the day the name of Richard Shackford was not
mentioned again by either Margaret or her father. It was a day of
suspense to both, and long before night-fall Margaret's impatience
for Richard to come had resolved itself into a pain as keen as that
with which Mr. Slocum contemplated the coming; for every hour
augmented his dread of the events that would necessarily follow the
reappearance of young Shackford in Stillwater.

On reaching his office, after the conversation with Margaret, Mr.
Slocum found Lawyer Perkins waiting for him. Lawyer Perkins, who was
as yet in ignorance of the late developments, had brought information
of his own. The mutilated document which had so grimly clung to its
secret was at last deciphered. It proved to be a recently executed
will, in which the greater part of Lemuel Shackford's estate, real
and personal, was left unconditionally to his cousin.

"That disposes of one of Mr. Taggett's theories," was Mr. Slocum's
unspoken reflection. Certainly Richard had not destroyed the will;
the old man himself had destroyed it, probably in some fit of pique.
Yet, after all, the vital question was in no way affected by this
fact; the motive for the crime remained, and the fearful evidence
against Richard still held.

After the departure of Lawyer Perkins, who had been struck by the
singular perturbation of his old friend,