intimations up to this
time. The cane was laid aside, and from the action of his right
forefinger on the palm of his left hand I judged that I was making no
small impression on his mind. When I had finished, he sat for a minute
silent; then he said:

"Thanks, Miss Butterworth; you have more than fulfilled my hopes. What
we buried was undoubtedly human, and the question now is, Who was it,
and of what death did he die?" Then, after a meaning pause: "_You_ think
it was Silly Rufus."

I will astonish you with my reply. "No," said I, "I do not. That is
where you make a mistake, Mr. Gryce."

XXVI

A POINT GAINED

He was surprised, for all his attempts to conceal it.

"No?" said he. "Who, then? You are becoming interesting, Miss
Butterworth."

This I thought I could afford to ignore.

"Yesterday," I proceeded, "I would have declared it to be Silly Rufus,
in the face of God and man, but after what I saw in William's room
during the hurried survey I gave it, I am inclined to doubt if the
explanation we have to give to this affair is so simple as that would
make it. Mr. Gryce, in one corner of that room, from which the victim
had so lately been carried, was a pair of shoes that could never have
been worn by any boy-tramp I have ever seen or known of."

"They were Loreen's, or possibly Lucetta's."

"No, Loreen and Lucetta both have trim feet, but these were the shoes of
a child of ten, very dainty at that, and of a cut and make worn by
women, or rather, I should say, by girls. Now, what do you make of
that?"

He did not seem to know what to make of it. Tap, tap went his finger on
his seasoned palm, and as I watched the slowness with which it fell, I
said to myself, "I have proposed a problem this time that will tax even
Mr. Gryce's powers of deduction."

And I had. It was minutes before he ventured an opinion, and then it was
with a shade of doubt in his tone that I acknowledge to have felt some
pride in producing.

"They were Lucetta's shoes. The emotions under which you labored--very
pardonable emotions, madam, considering the circumstances and the
hour----"

"Excuse me," said I. "We do not want to waste a moment. I was excited,
suitably and duly excited, or I would have been a stone. But I never
lose my head under excitement, nor do I part with my sense of
proportion. The shoes were not Lucetta's. She never wore any approaching
them in smallness since her tenth year."

"Has Simsbury a daughter? H