acknowledgments
made by the prisoner too?"

Rising from his seat, Mr. Ferris began slowly to pace the floor.

"I should like each of you," said he, without answering the appeal of
Byrd, "to tell me why I should credit what she told me in conversation
last night rather than what she uttered upon oath in the court-room
to-day?"

"Let me speak first," rejoined Byrd, glancing at Hickory. And, rising
also, he took his stand against the mantel-shelf where he could
partially hide his face from those he addressed. "Sir," he proceeded,
after a moment, "both Hickory and myself know Miss Dare to be innocent
of this murder. A circumstance which we have hitherto kept secret, but
which in justice to Miss Dare I think we are now bound to make known,
has revealed to us the true criminal. Hickory, tell Mr. Ferris of the
deception you practised upon Miss Dare in the hut."

The surprised, but secretly gratified, detective at once complied. _He_
saw no reason for keeping quiet about that day's work. He told how, by
means of a letter purporting to come from Mansell, he had decoyed
Imogene to an interview in the hut, where, under the supposition she was
addressing her lover, she had betrayed her conviction of his guilt, and
advised him to confess it.

Mr. Ferris listened with surprise and great interest.

"That seems to settle the question," he said.

But it was now Hickory's turn to shake his head.

"I don't know," he remonstrated. "I have sometimes thought she saw
through the trick and turned it to her own advantage."

"How to her own advantage?"

"To talk in such a way as to make us think Mansell was guilty."

"Stuff!" said Byrd; "that woman?"

"More unaccountable things have happened," was the weak reply of
Hickory, his habitual state of suspicion leading him more than once into
similar freaks of folly.

"Sir," said Mr. Byrd, confidingly, to the District Attorney, "let us run
over this matter from the beginning. Starting with the supposition that
the explanation she gave you last night was the true one, let us see if
the whole affair does not hang together in a way to satisfy us all as to
where the real guilt lies. To begin, then, with the meeting in the
woods----"

"Wait," interrupted Hickory; "there is going to be an argument here; so
suppose you give your summary of events from the lady's standpoint, as
that seems to be the one which interests you most."

"I was about to do so," Horace assured him, heedless of the