in the following
way"--on and on to the last words--"We didn't want to die; but we could
not bear separation, and I couldn't face letting an innocent man be
hung for me. I do not see any other way. I beg that there may be no
postmortem on our bodies. The stuff we have taken is some of that which
will be found on the dressing-table. Please bury us together.

"LAURENCE DARRANT.

"January the 28th, about ten o'clock p.m."

Full five minutes Keith stood with those sheets of paper in his hand,
while the clock ticked, the wind moaned a little in the trees outside,
the flames licked the logs with the quiet click and ruffle of their
intense far-away life down there on the hearth. Then he roused himself,
and sat down to read the whole again.

There it was, just as Larry had told it to him-nothing left out, very
clear; even to the addresses of people who could identify the girl as
having once been Walenn's wife or mistress. It would convince. Yes! It
would convince.

The sheets dropped from his hand. Very slowly he was grasping the
appalling fact that on the floor beside his chair lay the life or death
of yet another man; that by taking this confession he had taken into his
own hands the fate of the vagabond lying under sentence of death; that
he could not give him back his life without incurring the smirch of this
disgrace, without even endangering himself. If he let this confession
reach the authorities, he could never escape the gravest suspicion that
he had known of the whole affair during these two months. He would have
to attend the inquest, be recognised by that policeman as having come to
the archway to see where the body had lain, as having visited the
girl the very evening after the murder. Who would believe in the mere
coincidence of such visits on the part of the murderer's brother. But
apart from that suspicion, the fearful scandal which so sensational an
affair must make would mar his career, his life, his young daughter's
life! Larry's suicide with this girl would make sensation enough as it
was; but nothing to that other. Such a death had its romance; involved
him in no way save as a mourner, could perhaps even be hushed up! The
other--nothing could hush that up, nothing prevent its ringing to the
house-tops. He got up from his chair, and for many minutes roamed the
room unable to get his mind to bear on the issue. Images kept starting
up before him. The face of the man who handed him wig and gown each
mo