ions, and I'm off."

Mr. Fox turned towards the coroner, and opened his lips; but closed them
again without speaking. Did Sweetwater notice this act of self-restraint?
If he did, he failed to show it.

X

"I CAN HELP YOU"

A subtle knave; a finder out of occasions;
That has an eye can stamp and counterfeit
Advantages though true advantage never presents
Itself; A devilish knave!

_Othello_.

A half hour spent with Hexford in and about the club-house, and
Sweetwater was ready for the road. As he made his way through the
northern gate, he cast a quick look back at the long, low building he had
just left, with its tall chimneys and rows of sightless windows, half
hidden, half revealed by the encroaching pines. The mystery of the place
fascinated him. To his awakened imagination, there was a breathless
suggestion in it--a suggestion which it was his foremost wish, just now,
to understand.

And those pines--gaunt, restless, communicative! ready with their secret,
if one could only interpret their language. How their heads came together
as their garrulous tongues repeated the tale, which would never grow old
to them until age nipped their hoary heads and laid them low in the dust,
with their horror half expressed, their gruesome tale unfinished.

"Witnesses of it all," commented the young detective as he watched the
swaying boughs rising and dipping before a certain window. "They were
peering into that room long before Clarke stole the glimpse which has
undone the unfortunate Ranelagh. If I had their knowledge, I'd do
something more than whisper."

Thus musing, thus muttering, he plodded up the road, his insignificant
figure an unpromising break in the monotonous white of the wintry
landscape. But could the prisoner who had indirectly speeded this young
detective on his present course, have read his thoughts and rightly
estimated the force of his purpose, would he have viewed with so much
confidence the entrance of this unprepossessing stranger upon the
no-thoroughfare into which his own carefully studied admissions had
blindly sent him?

As has been said before, this road was an outlying one and but little
travelled save in the height of summer. Under ordinary circumstances
Sweetwater would have met not more than a half-dozen carts or sledges
between the club-house gates and the city streets. But to-day, the road
was full of teams carrying all sorts of incongruous people, eager for a
sight of the spot