the same order and regularity would reign in our home as in the home of her childhood. I blessed the chance, if chance it was, which had led me to Nerac, and as I paced the room and thought of Lauretta, I said audibly, "Thank God!"

Breakfast over, I strolled into the grounds, and made a careful inspection of the work which Martin Hartog had performed. The conspicuous conscientiousness of his labors added to my satisfaction, and I gave expression to it. He received my approval in manly_fashion, and said he would be glad if I always spoke my mind, "as I always speak mine," he added. It pleased me that he was not subservient; in all conditions of life a man owes it to himself to maintain, within proper bounds, a spirit of independence. While he was pointing out to me this and that, and urging me to make any suggestions which occurred to me, his daughter came up to us and said that a man wished to speak to me. I asked who the man was, and she replied, "The landlord of the Three Black Crows." Curious as to his purpose in making so early a call, and settling it with myself that his errand was on business, in connection, perhaps, with some wine he wished to dispose of, I told the young woman to send him to me, and presently he appeared. There was an expression of awkwardness, I thought, in his face as he stood before me, cap in hand.

"Well, landlord," I said, smiling; "you wish to see me?

"Yes, sir." And there he stopped. "Go on," I said, wondering somewhat at his hesitation.

"Can I speak to you alone, sir?"

แ Certainly. Hartog, I will see you again presently."

Martin Hartog took the hint, and left us together.

"Now, landlord," I said.

"It's about those two men, sir, you saw in my place last night."

"Those two men?" I said, pondering, and then a light broke upon me, and I thought it singular- as indeed it wasthat no recollection, either of the men or the incidents in association with them should have occurred to me since my awaking. "Yes?"

"You are quite safe, sir," said the landlord, "I am glad to find."

"Quite safe, landlord; but why should you be so specially glad?

"Nothing's happened here then, sir?" "Nothing.'

"That's what brought me round so

early this morning, for one thing; I was afraid something might have happened." "Kindly explain yourself," I said, not at all impatient, but amused rather. "What might have happened?"

"Well, sir, they might have found out, somehow or other, that you were sleeping in the house alone last night - and here he broke off and asked, "You did sleep here alone last night?"

66

Certainly I did, and a capital night's rest I had."

"Glad to hear that, sir. As I was say ing, if they had found out that you were sleeping here alone, they might have taken it into their heads to trouble you."

"They might, landlord, but facts are stubborn things. They did not, evidently." "I understand that now, sir, but I had my fears, and that's what brought me round for one thing."

"An expression you have used once before, landlord. For one thing.' I infer there must be another thing in your mind."

"There is, sir. You haven't heard, then?"

"As yet I have heard nothing but a number of very enigmatical observations from you with respect to these men. Ah, yes, I remember; you had your doubts of them when I visited you on my road home?"

"I had, sir; I told you I didn't like the looks of them, and that I was not easy in my mind about my own family, and the bit of money I had in my place to pay my rent with, and one or two other accounts."

"That is so; you are bringing the whole affair back to me. I saw the men after I left the Three Black Crows."

"You did, sir! When? Where?" "To tell you would be to interrupt what you have come here to say. No more roundabouts, landlord. Say what you have to say right on."

"Well, sir, this is the way of it. I suspected them from the first, and you will bear witness of it before the magistrate. They were strangers in Nerac, but that is no reason why I should have refused to sell them a bottle of red wine when they asked for it. It's my trade to supply customers, and the wine was the worst I had, consequently the cheapest. I had no right to ask their business, and if they chose to answer me uncivilly, it was their affair. I wouldn't tell everybody mine on the asking. They paid for the wine, and there was an end of it. They called for another bottle, and when I brought it I did not draw the cork till I had the money

grow to a fitting climax of violence. So with these. Probably the disagreement commenced on their way to the house, and had reached an angry point when one began to bore a hole in the shutter. This one it was who was found dead. The proof was in his hand - the gimlet with which he was working."

"Well conceived, sir," said the landlord, following with approval my speculative explanation.

"This man's face," I continued, "would be turned toward the shutter, his back to his comrade. Into this comrade's mind darts, like a lightning flash, the idea of committing the robbery alone, and so becoming the sole possessor of the treasure." "Good, sir, good," said the landlord, rubbing his hands.

"No sooner conceived than executed. Out comes his knife, or perhaps he has it ready in his hand opened."

"Why opened, sir?" Would it not be a fixed blade?"

"No; such men carry clasp-knives. They are safest, and never attract notice." "You miss nothing, sir," said the landlord admiringly. "What a magistrate you would have made!"

"He plunges it into his fellow-scoundrel's back, who falls dead, with the gimlet in his hand. The murder is explained." The landlord nodded excitedly, and continued to rub his hands; then suddenly stood quite still, with an incredulous expression on his face.

"But the robbery is not committed," he exclaimed; "the house is not broken into, and the scoundrel gets nothing for his pains."

With superior wisdom I laid a patronizing hand upon his shoulder.

"The deed done," I said, "and he, gazing upon his dead comrade, is overcome with fear. He has been rash-he may be caught red-handed; the execution of the robbery will take time. He is not familiar with the habits of the village, and does not know it has no guardians of the night. One may stroll that way and make discovery. Fool that he was! He has not only committed murder, he has robbed himself. Better to have waited till they had possession of the treasure; but this kind of logic always comes afterwards to ill-regulated minds. Under the influence of his newly born fears he recognizes that every moment is precious; he dare not linger; he dare not carry out the scheme. Shuddering, he flies from the spot, with rage and despair in his heart. Unhappy wretch! The curse of Cain is upon him."

CHAPTER XX.

THE landlord, who was profuse in the expressions of his admiration at the light I had thrown upon the case, so far as it was known to us, accompanied me to the house of Doctor Louis. It was natural that I should find Lauretta and her mother in a state of agitation, and it was sweet to me to learn that it was partly caused by their anxieties for my safety. Doctor Louis was not at home, but had sent a messenger to my house to inquire after me, and to give me some brief account of the occurrences of the night. We did not meet this messenger on our way to the doctor's; he must have taken a different route from ours.

"You did wrong to leave us last night," said Lauretta's mother chidingly.

I shook my head, and answered that it was but anticipating the date of my removal by a few days, and that my presence in her house would not have altered matters.

"Everything was right at home,” I said. Home! What inexpressible sweetness there was in the word! "Martin Hartog showed me to my room, and the servants you engaged came early this morning, and attended to me as though they had known my ways and tastes for years."

"You slept well?" she asked.

"A dreamless night," I replied; “but had I suspected what was going on here, I should not have been able to rest."

"I am glad you had no suspicion, Gabriel; you would have been in danger. Dreadful as it all is, it is a comfort to know that the misguided men do not belong to our village.'

Her merciful heart could find no harsher term than this to apply to the monsters, and it pained her to hear me say, "One has met his deserved fate; it is a pity the other has escaped." But I could not keep back the words.

Doctor Louis had left a message for me to follow him to the office of the village magistrate, where the affair was being investigated, but previous to going thither, I went to the back of the premises to make an inspection. The village boasted of one constable, and he was now on duty in a state of stupefaction. His orders were to allow nothing to be disturbed, but his bewilderment was such that it would have been easy for an interested person to do as he pleased in the way of alteration. A stupid lout, with as much intelligence as a vegetable. However, I saw at once that nothing had been disturbed.

The shutter in which a hole had been bored was closed; there were blood-stains on the stones, and I was surprised that they were so few; the gate by which the villains had effected an entrance into the garden was open; I observed some particles of sawdust on the window-ledge just below where the hole had been bored. All that had been removed was the body of the man who had been murdered by his comrade.

I put two or three questions to the constable, and he managed to answer in monosyllables, yes and no, at random. "A valuable assistant," I thought, "in unravelling a mysterious case! And then I reproached myself for the sneer. Happy was a village like Nerac in which crime was so rare, and in which an official so stupid was sufficient for the execution of the law.

The first few stains of blood I noticed were close to the window, and the stones thereabout had been disturbed, as though by the falling of a heavy body.

"Was the man's body," I inquired of the constable, "lifted from this spot?" He looked down vacantly and said, "Yes."

"You are sure?" I asked.

Sure," he said after a pause, but whether the word was spoken in reply to my question, or as a question he put to himself, I could not determine.

I continued my examination of the grounds. From the open gate to the window was a distance of forty-eight yards; I stepped exactly a yard, and I counted my steps. The path from gate to window was shaped like the letter S, and was for the most part defined by tall shrubs on either side, of a height varying from six to nine feet. Through this path the villains had made their way to the window; through this path the murderer, leaving his comrade dead, had made his escape. Their operations, for their own safety's sake, must undoubtedly have been conducted while the night was still dark. Reasonable also to conclude that, being strangers in the village (although by some means they must have known beforehand that Doctor Louis's house was worth the plundering), they could not have been acquainted with the devious turns in the path from the gate to the window. Therefore they must have felt their way through, touching the shrubs with their hands, most likely breaking some of the slender stalks, until they arrived at the open space at the back of the building.

These reflections impelled me to make

a careful inspection of the shrubs, and I was very soon startled by a discovery. Here and there some stalks were broken and torn away, and here and there were indisputable evidences that the shrubs had been grasped by human hands. It was not this that startled me, for it was in accordance with my own train of reasoning, but it was that there were stains of blood on the broken stalks, especially upon those which had been roughly torn from the parent tree. I seemed to see a man, with blood about him, staggering blindly through the path, snatching at the shrubs both for support and guidance, and the loose stalks falling from his hands as he went. Two men entered the grounds, only one left-that one, the murderer. The blood-stains indicated a struggle. Between whom? Between the victim and the perpetrator of the deed? In that case, what became of the theory of action I had so elaborately described to the landlord of the Three Black Crows? I had imagined an instantaneous impulse of crime and its instantaneous execution. I had imagined a death as sudden as it was violent, a deed from which the murderer had escaped without the least injury to himself; and here, on both sides of me, were the clearest proofs that the man who had fled must have been grievously wounded. My ingenuity was at fault in the endeavor to bring these signs into harmony with the course of events I had invented in my interview with the landlord.

I went straight to the office of the magistrate, a small building of four rooms on the ground floor, the two in front being used as the magistrate's private room and court, the two in the rear as cells, not at all uncomfortable, for aggressors of the law. It was but rarely that they were occupied. At the door of the court I encountered Father Daniel. He was pale, and much shaken. During his lifetime no such crime had been perpetrated in the village, and his only comfort was that the actors in it were strangers. But that did not lessen the horror of the deed, and his large heart overflowed with pity both for the guilty man and the victim.

"So sudden a death!" he said, in a voice broken by tears. "No time for repentance! Thrust before the Eternal presence weighed down by sin! I have been praying by his side for mercy, and for mercy upon his murderer. Poor sinners! poor sinners!"

I could not sympathize with his sentiments, and I told him so sternly. He