happened to him, rode out one day through a pelting
rain. Result, congested lungs; the poor wastrel, who had no wish to
live, was soon satisfactorily dead.

"When James Hampden got that news, he rose up from his chair, laid
the book he had been reading--it was Baxter's 'Saint's Rest'--down
on the library table and fell as if lightning had struck him.
Apoplexy, it was said; a thrust through the heart, I should call it.
Richard the sinner was none the less Richard his first-born.

"Hard upon the heels of these two disasters came a third, the case
of Jessamine Hynds. This Jessamine--a highly gifted, imperious
creature, proud as Lucifer, after the manner of the Hyndses--was an
orphan, reared in Hynds House. She was some several years older than
her cousins, to whom she was greatly attached. The trouble so preyed
upon her that she became melancholy, and one fine day disappeared
and was never afterward found. There was great hue and cry made for
her, and men riding hither and yon, for this was a Hynds woman, and
her story touched popular imagination, so that she is supposed,"
said the lawyer dryly, "to wander around Hynds House o' nights,
crying for Richard and searching for the lost jewels.

"After the death of James Hampden Hynds, it was discovered that he
had added a singular enough codicil to his will. This codicil
provided that in the event the jewels were found intact, and Richard
Hynds's innocence thereby incontrovertibly established, Hynds House
as it stood should revert to him as eldest son, after the custom of
the family. _But_ until the jewels were recovered, Richard and his
heirs were to have exactly--nothing. And nothing is what Richard and
his heirs got."

"And was he really guilty?" breathed Alicia. Her sympathy was
instantly with Richard. That is exactly like Alicia, who is sorry
for the fatted calf, and the Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea, and
Esau swindled out of his birthright; had she been one of the wise
virgins she would have trimmed the lamps of all the foolish ones and
waked them up in time.

"In theory," said the judge, "a man is innocent until he is proved
guilty. In practice, he is guilty until he can prove his innocence."

"And was nothing, absolutely nothing, ever heard or known
further?--nothing that would justify his mother's faith, or comfort
his poor young wife's heart?"

"There was but one incident to which even the most credulous could
attach the slightest importance. You shall ju