know----Ah, but I
do remember now to have heard that Mr. Benson had another son."

The face of Hartley grew graver and graver. "My brother has been
alienated from my father for some time, so you have never seen him here.
But to-night he hoped, or made me think he hoped, to effect a
reconciliation; so I managed, with my sister, to provide him with the
domino necessary to insure him an entrance here. Indeed, I did more; I
showed him a private door by which he could find his way into the
library, never suspecting any harm could come of son and father meeting
even in this surreptitious way. I--I loved my brother, and
notwithstanding the past, had confidence in him. Nor can I think now he
had any thing to do with the----" Here the voice of this inimitable
actor broke in well-simulated distress. He sank on a chair and put his
hands before his face.

The doctor had no reason to doubt this man. He therefore surveyed him
with a look of grave regard.

"Mr. Benson," said he, "you have my profoundest sympathy. A tragedy like
this in a family of such eminent respectability, is enough to overwhelm
the stoutest heart. If your brother is here----"

"Dr. Travis," broke in the other, rising and grasping the physician's
hand with an appearance of manly impulse impressive in one usually so
stern and self contained, "you are, or were, my father's friend; can you
or will you be ours? Dreadful as it is to think, my father undoubtedly
committed suicide. He had a great dread of this day. It is the
anniversary of an occurrence harrowing for him to remember. My
brother--you see I shall have to break the secrecy of years--was
detected by him in the act of robbing his desk three years ago
to-night, and upon each and every recurrence of the day, has returned to
his father's house to beg for the forgiveness and restoration to favor
which he lost by that deed of crime. Hitherto my father has been able to
escape his importunities, by absence or the address of his servants, but
to-day he seemed to have a premonition that his children were in league
against him, notwithstanding Carrie's ruse of the ball, and the
knowledge may have worked upon him to that extent that he preferred
death to a sight of the son that had ruined his life and made him the
hermit you have seen."

The doctor fell into the trap laid for him with such diabolical art.

"Perhaps; but if that is so, why is your brother not here? Only a few
minutes could have elapsed between the