man's heart and induced him to say:

"The truth should not be hard to find in a case like this. I'm sure the
young lady can explain. Doctor Golden, are you ready for her story?"

The coroner, who had been silent up till now, probably from sheer
surprise at the beauty and simple, natural elegance of the woman caught,
as he believed, in a net of dreadful tragedy, roused himself at this
direct question, and bowing with an assumption of dignity far from
encouraging to the man and woman anxiously watching him, replied:

"We will hear what she has to say, of course, but the facts are well
known. The woman she calls mother was found early this morning lying on
her face in the adjoining woods quite dead. She had fallen over a
half-concealed root, and with such force that she never moved again. If
her daughter was with her at the time, then that daughter fled without
attempting to raise her. The condition and position of the wound on the
dead woman's forehead, together with such corroborative facts as have
since come to light, preclude all argument on this point. But we'll
listen to the young woman, notwithstanding; she has a right to speak,
and she shall speak. Did not your mother die in the woods? No
hocus-pocus, miss, but the plain unvarnished truth."

"Sirs,"--the term was general, but her appeal appeared to be directed
solely to the one sympathetic figure before her, "if my mother died in
the wood--and, for all I can say, she may have done so--it was not till
after she had been in this house. She arrived in my company, and was
given a room. I saw the room and I saw her in it. I cannot be deceived
in this. If I am, then my mind has suddenly failed me;--something which
I find it hard to believe."

"Mr. Quimby, did Mrs. Demarest come to the house with Miss Demarest?"
inquired Mr. Hammersmith of the silent landlord.

"She says so," was the reply, accompanied by a compassionate shrug which
spoke volumes. "And I am quite sure she means it," he added, with kindly
emphasis. "But ask Jake, who was in the office all the evening. Ask my
wife, who saw the young lady to her room. Ask anybody and everybody who
was around the tavern last night. I'm not the only one to say that Miss
Demarest came in alone. All will tell you that she arrived here without
escort of any kind; declined supper, but wanted a room, and when I
hesitated to give it to her, said by way of explanation of her lack of a
companion that she had had trouble in Chest