rave as the occasion warranted.

"You are summoned to learn the murderous secret of these old walls,
and who it was that last made use of it. Do you feel inclined to
hear these details from my lips, or are you ready to state that you
already know the means by which so many persons, in times past as
well as in times present, have met death here? We do not require
you to answer us."

"I know the means," he allowed, recognizing without doubt that the
crisis of crises had come, and that denial would be worse than
useless.

"Then it only remains for us to acquaint you with the identity of
the person who last pressed the fatal spring. But perhaps you know
that, too?"

"I--" He paused; words were impossible to him; and in that pause
his eyes flashed helplessly in the direction of Miss Tuttle.

But the major was quick on his feet and was already between him and
that lady. This act forced from Mr. Jeffrey's lips the following
broken sentence:

"I should--like--you--to--tell--me." Great gasps came with
each heavily spoken word.

"Perhaps this morsel of lace will do it in a gentler manner than
I could," responded the district attorney, opening his hand, in
which lay the scrap of lace that, an hour or so before, I had
plucked away from the boarding of that fatal closet.

Mr. Jeffrey eyed it and understood. His hands went up to his face
and he swayed to the point of falling. Miss Tuttle came quickly
forward.

"Oh!" she moaned, as her eyes fell on the little white shred. "The
providence of God has found us out. We have suffered, labored and
denied in vain."

"Yes," came in dreary echo from the man none of us had understood
till now; "so great a crime could not be hid. God will have
vengeance. What are we that we should hope to avert it by any act
or at any cost?"

The major, with his eyes fixed piercingly on this miserable man,
replied with one pregnant, sentence:

"Then you forced your wife to suicide?"

"No," he began; but before another word could follow, Miss Tuttle,
resplendent in beauty and beaming with new life, broke in with the
fervid cry:

"You wrong him and you wrong her by such a suggestion. It was not
her husband but her conscience that forced her to this retributive
act. What Mr. Jeffrey might have done had she proved obdurate and
blind to the enormity of her own guilt, I do not know. But that he
is innocent of so influencing her is proved by the shock he suffered
at finding she had