perhaps more fearfully, than before.

Suddenly--was it at a gesture of the physician, or a look from
Imogene?--a thrill of expectation passed through the room, and Dr.
Tredwell, Mr. Ferris, and a certain other gentleman who had but just
entered at a remote corner of the apartment, came hurriedly forward and
stood at the foot of the bed. At the same instant Imogene rose, and
motioning them a trifle aside, with an air of mingled entreaty and
command, bent slowly down toward the injured man. A look of recognition
answered her from the face upon the pillow, but she did not wait to meet
it, nor pause for the word that evidently trembled on his momentarily
conscious lip. Shutting out with her form the group of anxious watchers
behind her, she threw all her soul into the regard with which she held
him enchained; then slowly, solemnly, but with unyielding determination,
uttered these words, which no one there could know were but a repetition
of a question made a few eventful hours ago: "If Craik Mansell is not
the man who killed Mrs. Clemmens, do you, Mr. Orcutt, tell us who is!"
and, pausing, remained with her gaze fixed demandingly on that of the
lawyer, undeterred by the smothered exclamations of those who witnessed
this scene and missed its clue or found it only in the supposition that
this last great shock had unsettled her mind.

The panting sufferer just trembling on the verge of life thrilled all
down his once alert and nervous frame, then searching her face for one
sign of relenting, unclosed his rigid lips and said, with emphasis:

"Has not Fate spoken?"

Instantly Imogene sprang erect, and, amid the stifled shrieks of the
women and the muttered exclamations of the men, pointed at the recumbent
figure before them, saying:

"You hear! Tremont Orcutt declares upon his death-bed that it is the
voice of Heaven which has spoken in this dreadful calamity. You who were
present when Mrs. Clemmens breathed her imprecations on the head of her
murderer, must know what that means."

Mr. Ferris, who of all present, perhaps, possessed the greatest regard
for the lawyer, gave an ejaculation of dismay at this, and bounding
forward, lifted her away from the bedside he believed her to have basely
desecrated.

"Madwoman," he cried, "where will your ravings end? He will tell no such
tale to me."

But when he bent above the lawyer with the question forced from him by
Miss Dare's words, he found him already lapsed into that stra