orm of her who but a few hours previous had been the
envy of all the fashionable young women in Washington. I found it
hard to fix my attention on the next question, interesting and
valuable as every small detail was likely to prove in case my theory
of this crime should ever come to be looked on as the true one.

"How came you to search here for the wife who had written you this
vague and far from satisfactory farewell? I see no hint in these
lines of the place where she intended to take her life."

"No! no!" Even this strong man shrank from this idea and showed a
very natural recoil as his glances flew about the ill-omened room
and finally rested on the fireside over which so repellent a mystery
hung in impenetrable shadow. "She said nothing of her intentions;
nothing! But the man who came for me told me where she was to be
found. He was waiting at the door of my house. He had been on a
search for me up and down the town. We met on the stoop."

The captain accepted this explanation without cavil. I was glad he
did. But to me the affair showed inconsistencies which I secretly
felt it to be my especial duty to unravel.

V

MASTER AND DOG

No further opportunity was afforded me that night for studying the
three leading characters in the remarkable drama I saw unfolding
before me. A task was assigned me by the captain which took me from
the house, and I missed the next scene--the arrival of the coroner.
But I repaid myself for this loss in a way I thought justified by
the importance of my own theory and the evident necessity there was
of collecting each and every point of evidence which could give
coloring to the charge, in the event of this crime coming to be
looked on at headquarters as one of murder.

Observing that a light was still burning in Uncle David's domicile,
I crossed to his door and rang the bell. I was answered by the deep
and prolonged howl of a dog, soon cut short by his master's amiable
greeting. This latter was a surprise to me. I had heard so often
of Mr. Moore's churlishness as a host that I had expected some
rebuff. But I encountered no such tokens of hostility. His brow
was smooth and his smile cheerfully condescending. Indeed, he
appeared anxious to have me enter, and cast an indulgent look at
Rudge, whose irrepressible joy at this break in the monotony of his
existence was tinged with a very evident dread of offending his
master. Interested anew, I followed this