s--and that I had supposed them to be those of Big Slim before he
put on his 'creepers.'"

"Tell me," said Scanlon, "have you ever, in the course of this affair,
believed young Frank Burton guilty?"

"At first I did not know. But after my second visit to Duncan Street,
and a little talk with the colored maid, who is an honest imaginative
soul, I was convinced that he was innocent."

"What did the maid tell you?" asked Bat.

"After the Bounder had been admitted to the house that night, she had
gone back to the kitchen to her work. She heard Frank come in, but she
did not catch anything of the altercation which followed. A little
later, her duties finished, she started for her room which was at the
top of the house. As she passed along the hall, on the second floor, she
noticed the door of the bath room standing open and remembered she had
not supplied it with fresh towels. The linen closet is in a room at the
far end of the hall; she went there and procured what she wanted, and as
she came into the hall once more she saw young Frank Burton come quickly
out of his room, stand at the head of the stairway for a moment as
though listening, and then hurry down to the floor below."

"That must have been after he had taken his sister to her room," said
Scanlon.

But Ashton-Kirk shook his head.

"No; a few minutes later the maid saw him ascend the stairs once more,
and the sister was with him then."

"But," cried Nora, a vague fear as to what this might lead to in her
mind, "when the maid was questioned by the coroner's physician she
said----"

But the investigator stopped her.

"As I have said, the maid is an altogether unimaginative creature, and
it never occurred to her that anything short of blows or outcries could
have anything to do with the crime. It was plain to me, as I talked to
her, that she had even then no notion of the importance of what she was
saying. She was simply answering questions. However, added to what the
nurse had told Dr. Shower, her information was vital, indeed. Miss
Wheeler had gone into the kitchen, if you recall her testimony, at a
time when the three Burtons, father, son and daughter, were in the
sitting-room. She said she had gone to tell the maid she might go to
bed, and found she had already gone; also she remained in the kitchen
for a space, attending to some duties of her own.

"During this interval young Burton must have gone to his room, probably
sick at heart with the wrangli