the same as usual, with the exception of the green
shade over his eyes?"

"Well, I reckon he did. I was kind of busy both times, and I don't know
as I took much notice."

"Still"--and I called up a laugh--"you'd have known whether it really
_was_ Mr. Farnham, or a stranger passing himself off in his place?"

The bartender stared at me for an instant, and, had he spoken his inmost
thoughts, probably they might have been appropriately expressed in the
slang phrase, "Ah, what are you givin' me?" "Well, it might have been
his grandfather's ghost, I daresay," he facetiously remarked at length,
"but, anyhow, there seemed to be a strong resemblance between Harvey
Farnham and him."

I set down my glass untouched. A cold conviction was growing within me
that I had been mistaken; that, villain as Carson Wildred was, he had
not, after all, been guilty of the one great crime which I had
attributed to him. It seemed almost impossible that this keen-eyed man,
accustomed to Farnham's comings and goings for several years, could have
mistaken another for him.

Next morning when I had put together the few things that I had had
occasion to unpack, and was "tipping" the pretty chambermaid who
"chanced" to come to my door as I was departing, a sudden inspiration
seized me, and I called the young woman back again as she was
disappearing.

"By the way," I said, "did you happen to attend a Mr. Harvey Farnham,
who was here a few days ago, and who has often stopped in the hotel?"

"Oh, yes, sir," she answered, "I know him quite well, and a very
pleasant, generous gentleman he is--or rather" (and her face changed at
some recollection), "or rather was."

I caught her up eagerly. "_Was?_" I echoed. "Wasn't he the same as
usual this last time?"

"No, that he wasn't, sir. I thought to myself, thinks I, 'Mr. Farnham
must have been disappointed in love or something,' he was so grumpy and
dull. Always before when he came he had a good word for me, 'How do you
do, Ginnie?' or a smile and a nod, but now he went by me without a sign,
for all the world as if he'd never seen me before, though I've been here
since I was seventeen; that's six years ago. When I spoke to him first,
why he looked up and answered in a mumbling way, never even saying my
name. But then, poor gentleman, I suppose he was too sick to think of
anybody except himself."

"Did he look strangely?" I went on to question.

"Oh, I don't know about that, sir, except for the green