While Isabel sat over the stove in the cold, austere parlor of the Warren house, with its ancient furniture, the never failing photograph album, and those huge pink shells on the mantle-shelf without which no rural home used to be complete—waiting for she scarcely knew what—strange things were going forward in the home of the Fairchilds.

On the forenoon of this same day, Thursday, there had been a gathering in the office of the Thessaly Banner of Liberty. It was the publication day of the paper, but for once it went to press without enlisting even the most careless scrutiny, let alone the solicitude, of its editor-proprietor. He had more serious business on hand. Closeted with him in the little editorial room, whose limited space had rarely before been so taxed, were Beekman, Ansdell, the District Attorney, the Sheriff, and the younger of the dead man’s two New York partners, a shrewd, silent, long-faced man. Seth had desired to be of the party but his brother had sent him off, to return after dinner.

These men gravely discussed some subjects with which our readers are familiar, and some now first brought to light. John had a letter from Annie, sent by hand the previous evening, detailing the strange things Milton had said to her about the black mare. Ansdell and Mr. Hubbard, the partner, recited how they had discovered that Albert Fairchild, on the preceding Monday, sold $16,000 worth of government bonds, and the abortive effort he made to so arrange the transfer that it would not be traced. Beekman recalled how the black mare had balked on the edge of the gulf the day after the murder—for they all thus characterized it now. Later, the Coroner came in by appointment, and in the presence of the dreaded District Attorney was meekness itself. He even heard that two physicians were to go out with the party, and make an examination, without taking offence.

After the noon-day dinner the gathering was reinforced by the two doctors and by Seth, the latter devoured by curiosity and vexed at being kept so long in the dark. Soon after, all of the party save the Sheriff made their way to the Fairchild house, driving by twos or threes, and at intervals, to avoid exciting suspicion. It was after the arrival of the last division that Ansdell met Isabel, and advised her to stay away from the house for a time.

The two surgeons and the Coroner went silently into the parlor, and closed the door behind them. In the living-room Ansdell, Hubbard, John, and the District Attorney took chairs around the stove, having given word that Milton, who was off on the other side of the hill, arranging the sale of some apples, should be sent in to them when he arrived, which could not be very long now. In the kitchen, opening back from the living-room as this in turn did from the parlor, Seth and Beekman sat with the three women of the household.

These latter had been told that something was going on, or rather had inferred it from being forbidden to leave the room, and were agog with puzzled excitement. They had no clue, save a vague understanding that important personages were in the front portions of the house, but Alvira and Melissa stole unhappy glances toward Seth, in uneasy fear that the worst suspicions born of Samantha’s recital were to be realized in fact. Aunt Sabrina, sitting with her shawl wrapped about her gaunt shoulders, and with her feet on a piece of wood in the oven, did not know of this story which gave point to the other women’s anxiety, but was in misery between a deep yearning to learn what had happened, and a pessimistic conviction that it must be another addition to the Fairchilds’ load of calamities.

They heard Milton drive up presently, and hail Dana with instructions to put the horse out, and a query concerning the several strange vehicles under the shed. Then he came into the kitchen, stamping his feet with the cold, and walking straight to the stove to warm his hands. It was growing dark in the low room, and he did not recognize Beekman.

Seth delivered his errand, saying that his brother John wished to see Milton, as soon as he returned, in the living-room. The hired man gave the speaker a curious glance, and, after a moment or two of hand warming, went in to learn what was wanted.

Almost as he closed the door behind him, the Sheriff entered the kitchen from the outside, and after an interrogative glance toward Beekman, which the latter answered by a nod, drew up a chair leisurely by the stove.

“Who’d a thought it ’d a turned out so cold, ‘fore the moon changed?” he asked of the company collectively. “Hev yeh got any cider abaout handy? ’N’ a daoughnut, tew, ef yeh don’t mine.”

While Melissa was in the cellar, the Sheriff, who was a Spartacus man and a stranger to both Seth and the females, asked of Beekman: “What did yeh agree on fer a sign?”

“Th’ shakin’ of th’ stove.”

Seth had been annoyed all day at the pains taken by John to keep the facts of the enterprise now in hand from him, and he displayed so much of this pique in the glance he now cast from the Sheriff to Beekman, that the latter felt impelled to speak:

“P’raps you disremember my askin’ yeh ’t’ other day ’baout whether yer brother had much money on him that night. Well, we’ve settled thet point. He did hev’—’n’ ’twas a considerable sum tew—‘baout sixteen thaousan’ dollars.”

“No!” Seth’s exclamation was of incredulous surprise.

“Yes, sixteen thaousan’. We knaow it.”

“Oh! I remember now,” said Seth, searching his impressions of the night. “I remember that when I said he might fail to be nominated, he slapped his breast two or three times as if he had something in the pocket. By George! I wonder——”

“Yeh needn’t waste no more time wond’rin’. Thet was it! ’N’ d’yeh knaow what he was goin’ to dew with thet money? No, yeh daon’t! He was agoin’ to buy me! I wouldn’t say this afore aoutsiders; I dunnao’s I’d say it to yeou ef your paper wa’n’t so dum fond o’ pitchin’ into me fer a boss, ’n’ a machine man ez yeh call it, ’n’ thet kine o’ thing. Yer brother hed th’ same idee o’ me thet your paper’s got. He was wrong. They tell me ther air’ some country caounties in th’ State where money makes th’ mare gao. But Jay ain’t one of ’em. Yer brother wanted to git into Congress. Ther was nao chance fer him in New York City. He come up here ’n’ he worked things pooty fine, I’m baoun’ to say, but he slipped up on me. Bribes may dew in yer big cities, but they won’t go daown in Jay. I don’t b’lieve they’s ez much of it done anywhere ez folks think, nuther.”

“But this money, then, was——”

“Lemme go on! P’raps this ’d never be’n faound aout, ef yer brother hadn’t made mistake number tew in pickin’ aout the wust ’n’ meanest cuss in th’ caounty to be his gao-between. I kin tell mean cusses when I see ’em, ’n’ this feller he had was jest the dirtiest scalawag I ever did see. I kin stan’ a scoundrel in a way ef he’s bright abaout it, but this was a reg’lar, natchul born fool. Somehaow in th’ kentry, these men don’t seem to hev no sense. Ef they’re goin’ to rob a man, or set his barns afire, or kill him, they dew it in the darnedest, clumsiest saort o’ way, so they’re sure to git faound aout the minute anybody looks an inch beyond his nose into th’ thing. It makes a man ashamed to be a kentry-man to see th’ foolish way these here blockheads git caught, ev’ry time.”

The women had been listening intently to this monologue. They looked at one another now, with the light of a strange new suspicion in their eyes.

“Who is this man? Who are you talking about?” Seth asked eagerly.

At that moment the sound of a stove being shaken vigorously came from the living-room. The Sheriff rose to his feet, and strode toward the door of this room.

“I’ll shaow him to yeh in th’ jerk of a lamb’s tail,” he said.





The conversation in the living-room, after Milton entered, had been trivial for a time, then all at once very interesting. He had been disagreeably surprised at finding three men with John, but had taken a seat, his big hands hanging awkwardly over his knees, and had been reassured somewhat by the explanation that Mr. Hubbard, the dead man’s partner, was anxiou............