lendid story," he cried. "I feel as if I were
in love again myself, not so much with her as with Eve or Helen of Troy,
or some such tower of beauty in the morning of the world. Don't you love
all heroic things, that gravity and great candor, and the way she took
one step from a sort of throne to stand in a wilderness with a vagabond?
Oh, believe me, it is she who is the poet; she has the higher reason,
and honor and valor are at rest in her soul."

"In short, she is uncommonly pretty," replied Ashe, with some cynicism.
"I knew a murderess rather well who was very much like her, and had just
that colored hair."

"You talk as if a murderer could be caught red-haired instead of
red-handed," retorted Paynter. "Why, at this very minute, you could be
caught red-haired yourself. Are you a murderer, by any chance?"

Ashe looked up quickly, and then smiled.

"I'm afraid I'm a connoisseur in murderers, as you are in poets," he
answered, "and I assure you they are of all colors in hair as well
as temperament. I suppose it's inhumane, but mine is a monstrously
interesting trade, even in a little place like this. As for that girl,
of course I've known her all her life, and--but--but that is just the
question. Have I known her all her life? Have I known her at all? Was
she even there to be known? You admire her for telling the truth; and so
she did, by God, when she said that some people wake up late, who have
never lived before. Do we know what they might do--we, who have only
seen them asleep?"

"Great heavens!" cried Paynter. "You don't dare suggest that she--"

"No, I don't," said the lawyer, with composure, "but there are other
reasons.... I don't suggest anything fully, till we've had our interview
with this poet of yours. I think I know where to find him."

They found him, in fact, before they expected him, sitting on the bench
outside the Vane Arms, drinking a mug of cider and waiting for
the return of his American friend; so it was not difficult to open
conversation with him. Nor did he in any way avoid the subject of the
tragedy; and the lawyer, seating himself also on the long bench that
fronted the little market place, was soon putting the last developments
as lucidly as he had put them to Barbara.

"Well," said Treherne at last, leaning back and frowning at the
signboard, with the colored birds and dolphins, just about his head;
"suppose somebody did kill the Squire. He'd killed a good many people
with his hygie