ous eye, he sought to
laugh off the episode. "Oh, well, I didn't _mean_ it, you know! Only
the compliments of the newly arrived." And as the bell jingled he took
down the receiver with obvious relief.

In the presence of poor Gladys, for whose calamity there could be no
prospect of alleviation, the subject of Briscoe's death and the child's
abduction as connected therewith could not be discussed in all its
bearings. Only Mrs. Marable joined Lillian in the library that afternoon
when the sheriff arrived, and the mother's eager hopes were strengthened
to note the serious importance he attached to the discovery of the bit of
stone in the pocket of the little red coat. He was obviously nettled that
it should have remained there unnoted while the garment was in his
keeping, but Lillian tactfully exhibited the unusual inner pocket in the
facing, the "shy pocket," which, thus located, offered some excuse for
the failure to find earlier its contents. With Julian Bayne's
suggestions, the sheriff presently hammered out a theory very closely
related to the truth. The visit of the revenue officer was detailed by
Bayne, and considered significant, the more since it began to be evident
that Briscoe was murdered, and in his case a motive for so perilous a
deed was wholly lacking. The stone lily in the child's pocket made it
evident that he himself had been in the moonshiners' cavern, the only one
known to the vicinity, or that the stone had been given to him by some
frequenter of that den--hardly to be supposed previous to the
catastrophe. In fact, the sheriff declared that he had reason to believe
that the child was wearing the coat at the time of the tragedy, and thus
it could not have been cast loosely from the vehicle at the moment when
the mare had fallen from the bluff to the depths below. It had been
restored to the locality in a clumsy effort to prove the child's death.

The officer was a big, burly man, handsome in his way, his ponderosity
suggesting a formidable development of muscle rather than fat. His manner
was as weighty as his appearance. He seemed as if he might have been
manufactured in a tobacco factory, so was the whole man permeated by
nicotian odors of various sorts, but he politely declined to smoke during
the long and wearing consultation, even with the permission of the ladies
present, and stowed away in his breast pocket the cigars that Bayne
pressed upon him, as he remarked, for reference at a moment of grea