he family for some years, I believe?"

"No. Unfortunately, there had been trouble between Arnold and his
father. For two years he had lived in town."

"Then it would be unlikely that he came here last night to get
possession of anything belonging to him?"

"I should think it hardly possible," he admitted.

"To be perfectly frank, Miss Innes, I can not think of any reason
whatever for his coming here as he did. He had been staying at the
club-house across the valley for the last week, Jarvis tells me, but
that only explains how he came here, not why. It is a most unfortunate
family."

He shook his head despondently, and I felt that this dried-up little
man was the repository of much that he had not told me. I gave up
trying to elicit any information from him, and we went together to view
the body before it was taken to the city. It had been lifted on to the
billiard-table and a sheet thrown over it; otherwise nothing had been
touched. A soft hat lay beside it, and the collar of the dinner-coat
was still turned up. The handsome, dissipated face of Arnold
Armstrong, purged of its ugly lines, was now only pathetic. As we went
in Mrs. Watson appeared at the card-room door.

"Come in, Mrs. Watson," the lawyer said. But she shook her head and
withdrew: she was the only one in the house who seemed to regret the
dead man, and even she seemed rather shocked than sorry.

I went to the door at the foot of the circular staircase and opened it.
If I could only have seen Halsey coming at his usual hare-brained clip
up the drive, if I could have heard the throb of the motor, I would
have felt that my troubles were over.

But there was nothing to be seen. The countryside lay sunny and quiet
in its peaceful Sunday afternoon calm, and far down the drive Mr.
Jamieson was walking slowly, stooping now and then, as if to examine
the road. When I went back, Mr. Harton was furtively wiping his eyes.

"The prodigal has come home, Miss Innes," he said. "How often the sins
of the fathers are visited on the children!" Which left me pondering.

Before Mr. Harton left, he told me something of the Armstrong family.
Paul Armstrong, the father, had been married twice. Arnold was a son by
the first marriage. The second Mrs. Armstrong had been a widow, with a
child, a little girl. This child, now perhaps twenty, was Louise
Armstrong, having taken her stepfather's name, and was at present in
California with the family.

"They w