rer ploughing a field who comes upon a vein of
gold. He has not only won this poor wretch to repentance, but has also
cleared from all suspicion of the darkest crime on the record of crimes
the clouded fame of a totally innocent man.

"Never was there a weightier example of the insufficiency of what is
called sufficient evidence, and while we, the public, should be deeply
glad that an innocent man has been proven innocent, we should also be
covered with confusion for the want of perspicacity displayed in the
general prejudgment of this case, where minds seem, sheep-like, to have
followed each other, without the asking of a question. The people of a
rural neighborhood are so convinced of the guilt of the person whom they
in their infallibility have arrested that they pay no heed to other
possibilities of the case. _Cui bono!_ And their wise-acre belief
spreads abroad in its brightest hues to the press--to the world. It is
the real foundation upon which all the evidence rested.

"A child throws a stone. Its widening ripples stretch across a lake, and
break upon far shores. A remote and bucolic community cherishes a
surmise, and a continent accepts it. The nineteenth century is hardly to
be congratulated upon such indolent inanity, such lambent laxity, as
this."

CHAPTER XL.

"Who ordered toil as the condition of life, ordered failure,
success; to this person a foremost place, to the other a struggle
with the crowd; to each some work upon the ground he stands on
until he is laid beneath it.... Lucky he who can bear his failure
generously, and give up his broken sword to Fate, the conqueror,
with a manly and humble heart."--WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

When set at liberty, Ward Heathcote returned to New York.

The newspapers everywhere had published similar versions of Pere
Michaux's agency in the discovery of the murderer, and Anne's connection
with it was never known. To this day neither Mrs. Blackwell, Mrs.
Strain, nor Mr. Graub himself, has any suspicion that their summer
visitors were other than the widow Young and her niece Ruth from the
metropolis of Washington.

Heathcote returned to New York. And society received him with widely
open arms. The women had never believed in his guilt; they now
apotheosized him. The men had believed in it; they now pressed forward
to atone for their error. But it was a grave and saddened man who
received this ovation--an ovation quiet, hard