hen arrested, unless,
indeed, the girl had committed the murder. The girl--Peggy! It came to
me like a flash, the solution of the strangest aspect of this puzzling
case--the reason why Penreath maintained his dogged silence under an
accusation of murder.

"It came to me, the clue for which I had been groping, with the
recollection of a phrase in the girl's story to me--her second story--in
which she not only told me of her efforts to shield Penreath, but
revealed frankly to me her relations with Penreath, innocent enough, but
commenced in chance fashion, and continued by clandestine meetings in
lonely spots. I remembered when she told me about it all that I was
impressed by Penreath's absolute straightforwardness in his dealings
with this girl. He was open and sincere with her throughout, gave her
his real name, and told her much about himself: his family, his
prospects, and even his financial embarrassment. He went further than
that: he told her that he was engaged to be married, and that if he
could get free he would marry her. A young man who talks in this strain
is very much in love. The artless story of Peggy revealed that Penreath
was as much in love with the girl as she was with him. 'If he could get
free!' That was the phrase that gave me the key to the mystery. He had
set out to get free by writing to Miss Willoughby, breaking off his
engagement. Later he had torn up the letter because through the door in
the wall he had seen Peggy standing by the bedside of the murdered man,
and had come to the conclusion that she had murdered him.

"If you think it a little strange that Penreath should have jumped to
this conclusion about the woman he loved, you must remember the
circumstances were unusual. Peggy had surrounded herself with mystery;
she refused to tell her lover where she lived, she would not even tell
him her name. When he looked into the room he did not even know she was
in the house, because she had kept out of his way during the previous
evening, waiting for an opportunity to see him alone. Consequently he
experienced a great shock at the sight of her, and the mystery with
which she had always veiled her identity and movements recurred to him
with a terrible and sinister significance as he saw her again under such
damning conditions, standing by the bedside of the dead man with a knife
in her hand.

"Penreath's subsequent actions--his destruction of the letter he had
written to Miss Willoughby, his hur