without entering, and the latter having been
proved beyond a question to have come into town on the morning train and
to have gone at once to court where he remained till the time they all
saw him disappear down the street.

That the last-mentioned individual may have had some guilty knowledge of
the crime was possible enough. The fact of his having wiped himself out
so completely as to elude all search, was suspicious in itself, but if
he was connected with the assault it must have been simply as an
accomplice employed to distract public attention from the real criminal;
and in a case like this, the interest naturally centres with the actual
perpetrator; and the question was now and must be: Who was the man who,
in broad daylight, dared to enter a house situated like this in a
thickly populated street, and kill with a blow an inoffensive woman?

"I cannot imagine," declared Mr. Ferris, as his communication reached
this point. "It looks as if she had an enemy, but what enemy could such
a person as she possess--a woman who always did her own work, attended
to her own affairs, and made it an especial rule of her life never to
meddle with those of anybody else?"

"Was she such a woman?" inquired Mr. Byrd, to whom as yet no knowledge
had come of the widow's life, habits, or character.

"Yes. In all the years I have been in this town I have never heard of
her visiting any one or encouraging any one to visit her. Had it not
been for Mr. Orcutt, she would have lived the life of a recluse. As it
was, she was the most methodical person in her ways that I ever knew. At
just such an hour she rose; at just such an hour put on her kettle,
cooked her meal, washed her dishes, and sat herself down to her sewing
or whatever work it was she had to do. The dinner was the only meal that
waited, and that, Mr. Orcutt says, was always ready and done to a turn
at whatever moment he chose to present himself."

"Had she no intimates, no relatives?" asked Mr. Byrd, remembering that
fragment of a letter he had read--a letter which certainly contradicted
this assertion in regard to her even and quiet life.

"None that I am aware of," was the response. "Wait, I believe I have
been told she has a nephew somewhere--a sister's son, for whom she had
some regard and to whom she intended to leave her money."

"She had money, then?"

"Some five thousand, maybe. Reports differ about such matters."

"And this nephew, where does he live?"

"I canno