s they
passed out, and down the steps. "They take you for a ghost, you know.
Let them keep on thinking so, and you are all right. You have given
Danton Hall all it wanted to make it perfect--it is a haunted house."

"It is haunted," said his companion, gloomily. "What am I better than
any other evil spirit? Oh, Heaven!" he cried, passionately, "the horror
of the life I lead! Shut up in the prison I dare not leave, haunted
night and day by the vision of that murdered man, every hope and
blessing that life holds gone forever! I feel sometimes as though I were
going mad!"

He lifted his cap and let the chill night wind cool his burning
forehead. There was a long, blank pause. When Reginald Stanford spoke,
his voice was low and subdued.

"Are you quite certain the man you shot was shot dead? You hardly waited
to see, of course; and how are you to tell positively the wound was
fatal?"

"I wish to Heaven there could be any doubt of it!" groaned the young
man. "My aim is unerring; I saw him fall, shot through the heart."

His voice died away in a hoarse whisper. Again there was a pause.

"Your provocation was great," said Reginald. "If anything can extenuate
killing a fellow-creature, it is that. Are you quite positive--But
perhaps I have no right to speak on this matter."

"Speak, speak!" broke out Harry Danton. "I am shut up in these horrible
rooms from week's end to week's end, until it is the only thing that
keeps me from going mad--talking of what I have done. What were you
going to say?"

"I wanted to ask you if you were quite certain--beyond the shadow of
doubt--of your wife's guilt? We sometimes make terrible mistakes in
these matters."

"There was no mistake," replied his companion, with a sudden look of
anguish, "there could be none. I saw and heard as plainly as I see and
hear you now. There could be no mistake."

"Do you know where your--where she is now?"

"No!" with that look of anguish still. "No, I have never heard of her
since that dreadful night. She may be dead, or worse than dead, long ere
this."

"You loved her very much," said Reginald, impelled to say it by the
expression of that ghastly face.

"Loved her?" he repeated. "I have no words to tell you how I loved her.
I thought her all that was pure, and innocent, and beautiful, and
womanly, and she--oh, fool, that I was to believe her as I did!--to
think, as she made me think, that I had her whole heart!"

"Would you like to have some on