ou were holding a tryst.
Did you speak, sir?"

"No!" was the violent, almost disdainful, rejoinder.

"You did not sleep at your aunt's, for her rooms contained not an
evidence of having been opened for a guest, while the hut revealed more
than one trace of having been used as a dormitory. I could even tell you
where you cut the twigs of hemlock that served you for a pillow, and
point to the place where you sat when you scribbled over the margin of
the Buffalo _Courier_ with a blue pencil, such as that I now see
projecting from your vest pocket."

"It is not necessary," replied the young man, heavily frowning. Then
with another short glance at Mr. Ferris, he again demanded:

"What is your reason for stating I visited my aunt's house on the
morning she was murdered? Did any one see me do it? or does the house,
like the hut, exhibit traces of my presence there at that particular
time?"

There was irony in his tone, and a disdain almost amounting to scorn in
his wide-flashing blue eyes; but Mr. Ferris, glancing at the hand
clutched about the railing of the desk, remarked quietly:

"You do not wear the diamond ring you carried away with you from the
tryst I mentioned? Can it be that the one which was picked up after the
assault, on the floor of Mrs. Clemmens' dining-room, could have fallen
from your finger, Mr. Mansell?"

A start, the first this powerfully repressed man had given, showed that
his armor of resistance had been pierced at last.

"How do you know," he quickly asked, "that I carried away a diamond ring
from the tryst you speak of?"

"Circumstances," returned the District Attorney, "prove it beyond a
doubt. Miss Dare----"

"Miss Dare!"

Oh, the indescribable tone of this exclamation! Mr. Byrd shuddered as he
heard it, and looked at Mr. Mansell with a new feeling, for which he had
no name.

"Miss Dare," repeated the District Attorney, without, apparently,
regarding the interruption, "acknowledges she returned you the ring
which you endeavored at that interview to bestow upon her."

"Ah!" The word came after a moment's pause. "I see the case has been
well worked up, and it only remains for me to give you such explanations
as I choose to make. Sir," declared he, stepping forward, and bringing
his clenched hand down upon the desk at which Mr. Ferris was sitting, "I
did not kill my aunt. I admit that I paid her a visit. I admit that I
stayed in the woods back of her house, and even slept in the hut, as