the mare and their heads were certainly very
close together. "Not touch her? See here!" Sweetwater had his arm round
the filly's neck and was looking straight into her fiery and intelligent
eye. "Shall I pass her story on?" he asked, with a magnetic smile at the
astonished coachman, which not only softened him but seemed to give the
watchful Hexford quite a new idea of this gawky interloper.

"You'll oblige _me_ if you can put her knowledge into words," the man
Zadok declared, with one fascinated eye on the horse and the other on the
house where he evidently felt that his presence was wanted. "She was out
that night, and I know it, as any coachman would know, who doesn't come
home stone drunk. But where she was and who took her, get her to tell if
you can, for I don't know no more 'n the dead."

"The dead!" flashed out Sweetwater, wheeling suddenly about and pointing
straight through the open stable-door towards the house where the young
mistress the old servant mourned, lay in her funeral casket. "Do you mean
her--the lady who is about to be buried? Could _she_ tell if her lips
were not sealed by a murderer's hand?"

"She!" The word came low and awesomely. Rude and uncultured as the man
was, he seemed to be strangely affected by this unexpected suggestion. "I
haven't the wit to answer that," said he. "How can we tell what she knew.
The man who killed her is in jail. _He_ might talk to some purpose. Why
don't you question him?"

"For a very good reason," replied Sweetwater, with an easy good-nature
that was very reassuring. "He was arrested on the spot; so that it wasn't
he who drove this mare home, unharnessed her, put her back in her stall,
locked the stable-door and hung up the key in its place in the kitchen.
Somebody else did _that_."

"That's true enough, and what does it show? That the mare was out on some
other errand than the one which ended in blood and murder," was the
coachman's unexpected retort.

"Is that so?" whispered Sweetwater into the mare's cocked ear. "She's not
quite ready to commit herself," he drawled, with another enigmatical
smile at the lingering Zadok. "She's keeping something back. Are you?" he
pointedly inquired, leaving the stalls and walking briskly up to Zadok.

The coachman frowned and hastily retreated a step; but in another moment
he leaped in a rage upon Sweetwater, when the sight of the flowers he
held recalled him to himself and he let his hand fall again with the
quiet rema