ting
that it would be a stranger to their eyes.

Alas! alas! only too familiar were the rich brown mottlings of the
stock, the steel mountings, the eagle crest, and twisted H. E. cipher!
and in sickness of heart the Doctor could not hide from himself the
dark clot of gore and the few white hairs adhering to the wood, and
answering to the stain that dyed the leather of the desk.

Henry could not repress an agonized groan, and averted his face; but
his companion undaunted met the superintendent's eye and query, 'You
know it, sir!'

'I do. It was my son-in-law's present to him. I wonder where he kept
it, for the ruffians to get hold of it.'

The superintendent remained civil and impassive, and no one spoke to
break the deathly hush of the silent room, filled with the appliances
of ordinary business life, but tainted with the awful unexplained mark
that there had been the foot of the shedder of blood in silence and at
unawares.

The man in authority at length continued his piteous exhibition. Dr.
Rankin of Whitford had arrived on the first alarm; but would not the
gentlemen see the body? And he led them on, Dr. May's eyes on the
alert to seize on anything exculpatory, but detecting nothing, seeing
only the unwieldy helpless form and aged feeble countenance of the
deceased, and receiving fresh impressions of the brutality and
cowardice of the hand that could have struck the blow. He looked,
examined, defined the injury, and explained that it must have caused
instant death, thus hoping to divert attention from his pale
horror-stricken companion, whose too apparent despondency almost
provoked him.

At the Doctor's request they were taken up the staircase into the
corridor, and shown the window, which had been found nearly closed but
not fastened, as though it had been partially shut down from the
outside. The cedar bough almost brushed the glass, and the slope of
turf came so high up the wall, that an active youth could easily swing
himself down to it; and the superintendent significantly remarked that
the punt was on the farther side of the stream, whereas the evening
before it had been on the nearer. Dr. May leant out over the
window-sill, still in the lingering hope of seeing--he knew not what,
but he only became oppressed by the bright still summer beauty of the
trees and grass and sparkling water, insensible of the horror that
brooded over all. He drew back his head; and as the door hard by was
opened, Le