es in the
Portland papers; simply couldn't bear it and haven't dared look at a
newspaper since. I shot a poor devil who had quite as much right to live
as I have. The thing will hang over me till I die! I don't know just why
I am confiding in you, but something tells me that you can look at the
thing straight. If you say I ought to go to Maine and surrender myself
and tell what I know about the shooting of that man I'll do it."

"Most certainly not!" cried Archie with mournful recollection of his own
speculations on the same point in the hours when he believed that he
himself was responsible for Hoky's death. The emotional strain of the
talk was telling on him. He had never expected to hear from Congdon's
lips the story of their duel at Bailey Harbor. Congdon had no idea that
he had fired not at a man but at a reflection in a mirror; and it was a
question whether common decency didn't demand that he set Congdon
straight. Congdon in all likelihood wouldn't believe him. Nobody would
believe such a story! And certainly if he should tell all he knew of the
Congdons and Isabel, and wind up by acknowledging that it was he who had
been in the Bailey Harbor house on the night of the shooting, Congdon
would probably be so frightened that he would run away in terror to seek
police protection.

Congdon, unaware of his companion's perturbation, rose and suggested a
walk to freshen them up before train time.

"I thank God I fell in with you," he said with feeling. "Just talking to
you has helped me a whole lot!"

Archie, his guilt heavy upon him, walked up Michigan Avenue beside the
man he had shot.

CHAPTER SIX

I

They breathed deep of the tonic air of the North as they left the
sleeper. Huddleston was a forlorn village with one street that displayed
a single line of buildings against a background of saw mill and sawdust.
An unpainted structure bearing the inscription, "Grand Hotel;
Fishermen's Resort" presented a picture of complete desolation to the
travelers. The further arm of the bay was a strip of green in the
distance.

A fisherman posed in monumental majesty on a weatherbeaten pile of
lumber on the wharf was the only human being in sight on the water side
of the town. Just as the train pulled out he jerked up his pole,
flinging a perch high in air and catching it with a yell of delight.
Archie sighed with relief as the fisherman, now standing erect to unhook
the perch, turned toward them. It was the Gove