in is that
Mr. Moore is held to the house by something even more serious than
his deep grief, and that the young lady who was the object of this
fatal dispute has left the city."

Pasted under this was the following short announcement:

"Married on the twenty-first of January, at the American consulate
in Rome, Italy, Edward Moore, of Washington, D. C., United States
of America, to Antoinette Sloan, daughter of Joseph Dewitt Sloan,
also of that city."

With this notice my interest in the book ceased and I prepared to
step down from the chair on which I had remained standing during
the reading of the above passages.

As I did so I spied a slip of paper lying on the floor at my feet.
As it had not been there ten minutes before there could be little
doubt that it had slipped from the book whose leaves I had been
turning over so rapidly. Hastening to recover it, I found it to
be a sheet of ordinary note paper partly inscribed with words in
a neat and distinctive handwriting. This was a great find, for
the paper was fresh and the handwriting one which could be readily
identified. What I saw written there was still more remarkable.
It had the look of some of the memoranda I had myself drawn up
during the most perplexing moments of this strange case. I
transcribe it just as it read:

"We have here two separate accounts of how death comes to those
who breathe their last on the ancestral hearthstone of the Moore
house library.

"Certain facts are emphasized in both:

"Each victim was alone when he fell.

"Each death was preceded by a scene of altercation or violent
controversy between the victim and the alleged master of these
premises.

"In each case the master of the house reaped some benefit, real or
fancied, from the other's death."

A curious set of paragraphs. Some one besides myself was searching
for the very explanation I was at that moment intent upon. I should
have considered it the work of our detectives if the additional
lines I now came upon could have been written by any one but a Moore.
But no one of any other blood or associations could have indited the
amazing words which followed. The only excuse I could find for them
was the difficulty which some men feel in formulating their thoughts
otherwise than with pen and paper, they were so evidently intended
for the writer's eye and understanding only, as witness:

"Let me recall the words my father was uttering when my brother
rushed in upon u