th all my apparent bravado I did not enjoy too close a
proximity to the cruel hearthstone, I stopped to give this settle a
thorough investigation. The result was disappointing. To all
appearance and I did not spare it the experiment of many a thump and
knock--it was a perfectly innocuous piece of furniture, clumsy of
build, but solid and absolutely devoid of anything that could explain
the tragedies which had occurred so near it. I even sat down on its
musty old cushion and shut my eyes, but was unrewarded by alarming
visions, or disturbance of any sort. Nor did the floor where it had
stood yield any better results to the inquiring eye. Nothing was to
be seen there but the marks left by the removal of its base from the
blackened boards.

Disgusted with myself, if not with this object of my present
disappointment, I left that portion of the room in which it stood
and crossed to where I had found the little table on the night of
Mrs. Jeffrey's death. It was no longer there. It had been set back
against the wall where it properly belonged, and the candelabrum
removed. Nor was the kitchen chair any longer to be seen near the
book shelves. This fact, small as it was, caused me an instant of
chagrin. I had intended to look again at the book which I had
examined with such unsatisfactory results the time before. A glance
showed me that this book had been pushed back level with the others;
but I remembered its title, and, had the means of reaching it been
at hand, I should certainly have stolen another peep at it.

Upstairs I found the same signs of police interference. The shutter
had been fastened in the southwest room, and the bouquet and wrap
taken away from the bed. The handkerchief, also, was missing from
the mantel where I had left it, and when I opened the closet door,
it was to find the floor bare and the second candelabrum and candle
removed.

"All gone," thought I; "each and every clue."

But I was mistaken. In another moment I came upon the minute filings
I had before observed scattered over a small stand. Concluding from
this that they had been passed over by Durbin and his associates as
valueless, I swept them, together with the dust in which they lay,
into an old envelope I happily found in my pocket. Then I crossed to
the mantel and made a close inspection of its now empty shelf. The
scratches which I had made there were visible enough, but the
impressions for which they stood had vanished i