d rolled another cigarette. Try as he might to steady
his fingers, they trembled. He had never heard Hugh's story. He did
not want to hear it. The very name of Rutherford that had, in what now
seemed to him another age, belonged to Hugh and to him was terrible
in his ears. A sickness of dread seized him. Fortunately the eyes of
neither of the men were upon him. Sylvie had their whole attention.

The detective spoke. "He was a storekeeper back in a university town,
way East, where I came from. He kept a bookshop and had a heap of
book-learning. I remember him myself, though I was a youngster. He was a
wonderful, astonishing sort of chap, though as ugly as the devil; had a
great gift of narration, never told the truth in his life, I guess, but
that only made him all the more entertaining. And he had a temper--phew!
Redhot! He'd fly out and storm and strike in all directions. That's
what did for him. Some fool quarrel about a book it was, and the man,
a frequenter of the shop, a scholar, a scientist, professor at the
university, accused Rutherford of lying. Rutherford had a heavy brass
paper-cutter in his hand. The professor had a nasty tongue in his head.
Well, a tongue's no match for a paper-cutter. The professor said too
much, called Rutherford a hump-backed liar and got a clip on the head
that did for him."

"It's an ugly story," said Sylvie. Bella and Pete retained their
silence.

"Murder ain't pretty telling, as a general thing," remarked the sheriff.

"No, though I've heard of cases where a man was justified in killing
another man--I mean to save some one he loved from dreadful suffering,"
Sylvie replied.

"Well, ma'am, I don't know about that. I've read stories that make it
look that way, but in all my experience, it's the cowards and the fools
that kill, and they do it because they're lower down, closer to the
beast, or perhaps to an uncontrolled child, than most of us."

"But there was a time," Bella said, with a smothered passion, "when an
insult to a gentleman's honor had to be avenged."

"Yes, ma'am," drawled the sheriff, "in them history days things was
fixed up to excuse animal doin's, kind of neater and easier and more
becomin' than they are now. Well, Mr. Garth, can we have our beds? We've
kept these ladies up talkin' long enough. Your mother looks plum wore
out."

They slept in the bed usually shared by Pete and Hugh. Pete lay on the
floor in the living-room not far from his brother's hiding-plac