. Symonds, have you brought your register for the past week?"

"Yes, sir," answered the new-comer, with a good deal of flurry in his
manner and an embarrassed look about him, which convinced Mr. Byrd that
the words in regard to whose origin he had been so doubtful that
morning, had been real words and no dream.

"Very well, then, submit it, if you please, to the jury, and tell us in
the meantime whether you have entertained at your house this week any
guest who professed to come from Toledo?"

"I don't know. I don't remember any such," began the witness, in a
stammering sort of way. "We have always a great many men from the West
stopping at our house, but I don't recollect any special one who
registered himself as coming from Toledo."

"You, however, always expect your guests to put their names in your
book?"

"Yes, sir."

There was something in the troubled look of the man which aroused the
suspicion of the coroner, and he was about to address him with another
question when one of the jury, who was looking over the register, spoke
up and asked:

"Who is this Clement Smith who writes himself down here as coming from
Toledo?"

"Smith?--Smith?" repeated Symonds, going up to the juryman and looking
over his shoulder at the book. "Oh, yes, the gentleman who came
yesterday. He----"

But at this moment a slight disturbance occurring in the other room, the
witness paused and looked about him with that same embarrassed look
before noted. "He is at the hotel now," he added, with an attempt at
ease, transparent as it was futile.

The disturbance to which I have alluded was of a peculiar kind. It was
occasioned by the thick-set man making the spring which, for some
minutes, he had evidently been meditating. It was not a tragic leap,
however, but a decidedly comic one, and had for its end and aim the
recovery of a handkerchief which he had taken from his pocket at the
moment when the witness uttered the name of Smith, and, by a useless
flourish in opening it, flirted from his hand to the floor. At least, so
the amused throng interpreted the sudden dive which he made, and the
heedless haste that caused him to trip over the gentleman's hat that
stood on the floor, causing it to fall and another handkerchief to
tumble out. But Mr. Byrd, who had a detective's insight into the whole
matter, saw something more than appeared in the profuse apologies which
the thick-set man made, and the hurried manner in which he gathered up