e of the rest."

"Yes, yes," I agreed feverishly, pressing his hand.

"It all came about through you," he blundered on. "You told me of the
fellow you saw riding away from The Whispering Pines at the time you
entered the grounds. I passed the story on to the coroner, and he to a
New York detective they have put on this case. He and Arthur's own surly
nature did the rest."

I cringed where I lay. This was my work. The person who drove out of the
club-house grounds while I stood in the club-house hall was Carmel--and
the clew I had given, instead of baffling and confusing them, had led
directly to Arthur!

Seeing nothing peculiar--or at all events, giving no evidence of having
noted anything peculiar in my movement--Clifton went evenly on, pouring
into my astonished ears the whole long story of this detective's
investigations.

I heard of his visit at the mechanic's cottage and of the identification
of the hat marked by Eliza Simmons's floury thumb, with an old one of
Arthur's, fished out from one of the Cumberland closets; then, as I lay
dumb, in my secret dismay and perturbation, of Arthur's acknowledged
visit to the club-house, and his abstraction of the bottles, which to all
minds save my own, perhaps, connected him directly and well-nigh
unmistakably, with the crime.

"The finger of God! Nothing else. Such coincidences cannot be natural,"
was my thought. And I braced myself to meet the further disclosures I saw
awaiting me.

But when these disclosures were made, and Arthur's conduct at the
funeral was given its natural explanation by the finding of the
tell-tale ring in Adelaide's casket, I was so affected, both by the
extraordinary nature of the facts and the doubtful position in which
they seemed to place one whom, even now, I found it difficult to believe
guilty of Adelaide's death, that Clifton, aroused, in spite of his own
excitement, to a sudden realisation of my condition, bounded to his feet
and impetuously cried out:

"I had to tell you. It was your due and you would not have been satisfied
if I had not. But I fear that I rushed my narrative too suddenly upon
you; that you needed more preparation, and that the greatest kindness I
can show you now, is to leave before I do further mischief."

I believe I answered. I know that his idea of leaving was insupportable
to me. That I wanted him to stay until I had had time to think and adjust
myself to these new conditions. Instinctively, I did not feel as