rper, I want to ask you a plain question----"

"And you want a categorical answer, Mr. Darrel," interrupted the New
Yorker with a laugh.

"I do."

"Go ahead."

"Weren't you in Black Hollow last night?"

"Certainly not. I was with a friend at least sixty miles away, near
Chicago."

"Can you prove this?"

"If necessary, of course; but what in the world is the matter, Dyke? I
hope you wouldn't accuse me of deception."

"No. Will you come with me to Bragg's?"

"Certainly."

And then the two men walked away together. There was a solemn
expression pervading the face of Dyke Darrel. He had experienced many
strange things during his detective life, but this latest phase
puzzled him the most.

He could swear that he saw the face of Elliston at the window of the
house in the gulch on the previous night, yet the assertion from his
friend that he was fifty miles away at the time seemed honest enough.

Having been long in the detective work, Dyke Darrel had grown to be
suspicious, and so he was fast losing faith in the good intentions of
his New York friend. He had suddenly resolved on a test that he
believed would prove effectual in setting all doubts at rest.

Arrived at the Bragg dwelling, the detective conducted Harper Elliston
at once to the room where the remains of the beautiful, dead girl lay
encoffined.

CHAPTER XIV

DYKE DARREL ASTOUNDED.

Dyke Darrel lifted a cloth from the face of the dead, and Harper
Elliston stood gazing down upon the features of wronged and murdered
Sibyl Osborne.

The detective watched the expression of his companion's countenance
closely.

With bated breath the man-hunter glued his gaze upon the face of the
man bending over the casket.

"What a sad face, and yet most wonderful in its beauty. Who is she? A
daughter of the house?"

Harper turned and regarded Dyke Darrel questioningly, a sympathetic
look in his black eyes.

"Do you not know her?"

"_I_ know her? You forget that I am a stranger in this part of the
West, Dyke."

"She, too, was a stranger here, Elliston. Her home was in Burlington,
and she has been brought to this by a villain who ought to pass the
remainder of his days behind prison bars, if not conclude them at a
rope's end. Do you know Hubert Vander?"

There was a stern ring in the detective's voice, and a look of deep,
indignant feeling pervading his face. All the time he kept his gaze
riveted on Elliston.

That gentleman stood the ordeal