at the outcome of her friends' visit to New York.

"Elliston will be convicted and hanged," was Bernard's verdict.

On the very day of Harry's arrival at the farm-house, he, with the old
farmer, was summoned to visit one who had met with a fatal accident
and was about to die.

It proved to be Martin Skidway, who lay on a barn floor with his head
in his mother's lap, gasping his life away, an ugly wound in his side.

He had accidentally shot himself and was rapidly sinking. A fugitive
in hiding for weeks, his life had been an intolerable one. Now that he
was dying, he made a full confession, admitting his own hand in the
awful railroad crime, and implicating two others, Elliston and Nick
Brower. Sam Swart had been one of them, but he was known to be dead.

"Without HIS urging I would never have stained my hands; in fact, it
was Elliston who struck the blow that killed the express messenger."

Without this confession, there was evidence enough to convict the New
Yorker; with it, both Brower and the principal were found guilty of
murder in the first degree and sentenced to the gallows. Nick Brower
was the only one of the four who expiated his crime on the gallows.
Harper Elliston died in prison by his own hand.

He left a note admitting the express crime, and also confessing to the
murder of Captain Osborne and the ruin of his daughter Sibyl. His was
a fitting end to a career of unparalleled crime.

* * * * *

We now draw a veil over the scene.

Harry Bernard and Nell Darrel were, soon after the arrest and death of
Elliston, happily married.

Dyke Darrel considers the events leading up to the capture and
punishment of those engaged in the crime of the midnight express as
among the most thrilling and wonderful of his detective experience. To
Harry Bernard and Paul Ender he gives a large share of the credit, and
with them shared the reward. Bernard has of late worked in conjunction
with Dyke Darrel on other cases, and is fast winning a reputation
second only to that of the great railroad detective himself.

THE END.

WON BY CRIME

CHAPTER I

A young girl, about eighteen, with a slender, elegant form, beautiful
straight features, and eyes of softest darkness, sitting before a
large table covered with maps and drawings, which she was trying
vainly to study.

"It is no use!" she cried, at last, pushing back the mass of thick
black hair falling over her white brow; "I shal