erve myself--I was trying to find
out...."

I caught the hands that were bruising themselves against each other
and held them fast.

"Miss Vaughan," I said, "listen to me and believe that I am telling
you the whole truth. The coroner's jury returned a verdict that Swain
was guilty of your father's death. As the result of that verdict, he
has been taken to the Tombs. But the last words he said to me before
the officers took him away were that he was innocent, and that he had
no fear."

"Surely," she assented, eagerly, "he should have no fear. But to think
of him in prison--it tears my heart!"

"Don't think of it that way!" I protested. "He is bearing it
bravely--when I saw him last, he was smiling."

"But the stain--the disgrace."

"There will be none; he shall be freed without stain--I will see to that."

"But I cannot understand," she said, "how the officers of the law
could blunder so."

"All of the evidence against him," I said, "was purely circumstantial,
except in one particular. He was in the grounds at the time the murder
was committed; your father had quarrelled with him, and it was
possible that he had followed you and your father to the house,
perhaps not knowing clearly what he was doing, and that another
quarrel had occurred. But that amounted to nothing. Young men like
Swain, even when half-unconscious, don't murder old men by strangling
them with a piece of curtain-cord. To suppose that Swain did so would
be absurd, but for one thing--no, for two things."

"What are they?" she demanded.

"One is that the handkerchief which you had tied about his wrist was
found beside your father's chair--but it was not upon that the jury
made its finding."

"What was it, then?"

"It was this: Swain swore positively that at no time during the
evening had he touched your father."

"Yes, yes; and that was true. He could not have touched him."

"And yet," I went on slowly, "prints of Swain's blood-stained fingers
were found on your father's robe."

"But," she gasped, pulling her hands away from me and wringing them
together, "how could that be? That is impossible!"

"I should think so, too," I agreed, "if I had not seen the prints with
my own eyes."

"You are sure they were his--you are sure?"

"I am afraid there can be no doubt of it," and I told her how
Sylvester had proved it.

She listened motionless, mute, scarce-breathing, searching my face
with distended eyes. Then, suddenly, her face changed