m Dimmersville," was the reply.

"Did you see anybody on the way?"

"I started very early. Folks were not out of their beds in the
houses--as long as there were any houses--and that is only for five or
six miles, you know. After that--yes--I did see one man. A curiously
excited chap. He looked tired out. He asked the distance to
Dimmersville, and whether the telegraph office would be open by the time
he got there. Then he skurried on before I'd half answered him."

All that was known of the murder was told to the stranger by half a
dozen glib tongues, and it was explained to him that he had encountered
the maniacal fugitive.

"I knew there was something wrong about him," said the stranger. "It is
my business to be observant."

He dismounted and hitched his horse to a tree. The dead body was shown
to him. He examined it very thoroughly. All the particulars were related
to him over and over. Then he drew Superintendent Brainerd aside.

"My name is Terence O'Reagan," he said, and in his voice was faintly
distinguishable the brogue of the land whence the O'Reagans came. "I am
a government detective. I have been sent to work up evidence in the case
of some Italian counterfeiters. We had a clew pointing to a
sub-contractor here--the very man who lies there dead. Our information
was that he used some of the bogus bills in paying off his gang. Now, it
isn't going outside my mission to investigate his death--if you don't
object."

"I would be glad to have you take hold of it," Brainerd replied. "We
can't bring the authorities here before noon, at the earliest, and in
the mean time you can perhaps clear it all up."

The eagerly curious men had crowded close to this brief dialogue, and
had heard the latter part of it. O'Reagan became instantly an important
personage, upon whose smallest word or movement they hung expectantly,
and nobody showed a keener interest than Gerald Heath. The detective
first examined the body. The pockets of Ravelli's clothes contained a
wallet, with its money untouched, beside a gold watch.

"So robbery was not the object," said O'Reagan to Brainerd. "The motive
is the first thing to look for in a case of murder."

Next, he found blood on the waistcoat, a great deal of it, but dried by
the fire that had burned the shoulders and head; and in the baked cloth
were three cuts, under which he exposed three stab wounds. Strokes of a
knife had, it seemed, killed the victim before he was thrust partial