ood silent, gazing curiously down at the pieces
before him. The blue paper peeling away from the pink made it impossible
for him to deny that just such paper as Miss Demarest described had been
on the wall prior to the one they had all seen and remembered.[A]

[Footnote A: Hammersmith's first attempt to settle this fact must have
failed from his having chosen a spot for his experiment where the old
paper had been stripped away before the new was put on.]

"Well, I vum!" Jake finally broke out, turning and looking from one face
to another with a very obvious attempt to carry off the matter jovially.
"She must have a great eye; a--a--(another hard word! What is it now?)
Well! no matter. One of the kind what sees through the outside of things
to what's underneath. I always thought her queer, but not so queer as
that. I'd like to have that sort of power myself. Wouldn't you, Huldah?"

The girl, whose eye, as Hammersmith was careful to note, had hardly
dwelt for an instant on these bits, not so long by any means as a
woman's natural curiosity would seem to prompt, started as attention was
thus drawn to herself and attempted a sickly smile.

But the coroner had small appreciation for this attempted display of
humour, and motioning to Hammersmith to take her away, he subjected the
clerk to a second examination which, though much more searching and
rigorous than the first, resulted in the single discovery that for all
his specious love-making he cared no more for the girl than for one of
his old hats. This the coroner confided to Hammersmith when he came in
looking disconsolate at his own failure to elicit anything further from
the resolute Huldah.

"But you can't make her believe that now," whispered Hammersmith.

"Then we must trick him into showing her his real feelings."

"How would you set to work? He's warned, she's warned, and life if not
love is at stake."

"It don't look very promising," muttered Doctor Golden, "but----"

He was interrupted by a sudden sound of hubbub without.

"It's Quimby, Quimby!" declared Hammersmith in his sudden excitement.

But again he was mistaken. It was not the landlord, but his wife,
wild-eyed, dishevelled, with bits of straw in her hair from some
sheltering hayrick and in her hand a heavy gold chain which, as the
morning sun shone across it, showed sparkles of liquid clearness at
short intervals along its whole length.

Diamonds! Miss Thistlewaite's diamonds, and the woman who