ss, and it still remains
one.

The sun rises and sets, without throwing any light upon it. Conjecture
can do nothing to clear it up; and search, over and over unsuccessful,
is at length abandoned.

If people still speculate upon how the body of the murdered man has been
disposed of, there is no speculation as to who was his murderer, or how
the latter made escape.

The treason of the jail-keeper explains this--itself accounted for by
Ephraim Darke having on the previous day paid a visit to his son in the
cell, and left with him a key that ere now has opened many a prison
door. Joe Harkness, a weak-witted fellow, long suspected of
faithlessness, was not the man to resist the temptation with which his
palm had been touched.

Since that day some changes have taken place in the settlement. The
plantation late Armstrong's has passed into the hands of a new
proprietor--Darke having disposed of it--while the cottage of the
Clancys, now ownerless, stays untenanted. Unfurnished too: for the
bailiff has been there, and a bill of sale, which covered its scant
plenishing, farm-stock, implements and utensils, has swept all away.

For a single day there was a stir about the place, with noise
corresponding, when the chattels were being disposed of by public
auction. Then the household gods of the decayed Irish gentleman were
knocked down to the highest bidder, and scattered throughout the
district. Rare books, pictures, and other articles, telling of refined
taste, with some slight remnants of _bijouterie_, were carried off to
log-cabins, there to be esteemed in proportion to the prices paid for
them. In fine, the Clancy cottage, stripped of everything, has been
left untenanted. Lone as to the situation in which it stands, it is yet
lonelier in its desolation. Even the dog, that did such service in
pointing out the criminality of him who caused all the ruin, no longer
guards its enclosures, or cheers them with his familiar bark. The
faithful animal, adopted by Simeon Woodley, has found a home in the
cabin of the hunter.

It is midnight; an hour still and voiceless in Northern climes, but not
so in the Southern. Far from it in the State of Mississippi. There the
sun's excessive heat keeps Nature alert and alive, even at night, and in
days of December.

Though night, it is not December, but a date nearer Spring. February is
written on the heading of letters, and this, a Spring month on the Lower
Mississippi, has c