"Pigot?" I glanced at Jane. "There's a Pigot in Waynesboro'; you don't mean him?" "That's the man. But he was up in Lhalf his time." "Well?" "Well, he was murdered up in our place. It was a foul deed, Sir-a bloody deed," growing hot. "I am surprised you have not heard of it. Why, the papers are filled with it." "It is a bad business, no doubt. But your fish is growing cold, Mr. Stroud. This Pigot, my dear," to Jane, "is the man who held Myers's mortgage." “Oh, nothing," coolly, pleased at having touched me at last. "Only he's charged with the murder, and it is pretty certain he did it." I knew how to control my face, so only said, "Tut! tut!" and went on with my dinner before asking any questions; but Jane flamed out, and said she was as likely herself to commit a murder as Mr. Myers, and after a moment or two grew very pale, and asked to be excused from the table. I picked the story out of Stroud by piecemeal. Myers, as I said, was a sort of agent for Squire Hall, and for several years had boarded with him and his wife. There was no other man in the house at the present time; nor, indeed, any women but an old deaf cook, the other servants having left after harvest. Pigot, it seems, had come up to L- on his way to Philadelphia, and stopped at Squire Hall's. The one tavern in the town was only a wagon-stand, and the gentlemen of the place were in the habit of asking their friends home even more than is usual in country villages. Pigot had been in the house for a day or two. He and Myers did not meet on the friendliest footing the whole town knew, as part of Pigot's errand in town was to foreclose the mortgage on Joe's farm and put it under the hammer. "Pigot was hard on him, there's no disputing that," Stroud said. "If it had not been for the fall in wool Joe could have paid him last month. As it was, Hall would likely have come to the rescue in January, when his payments came in -so we all thought, at least." "I thought Hall was a close man to deal with ?" "Well, yes. Still, him and Joe's pulled in harness together a long time. It's likely he'd have seen him through come New-Year's." Hall, however, had not offered to see him through now. The mortgage was to be closed on a Monday. On Saturday night hard words passed between the two men at the supper-table, Joe swearing that he knew a way to hold to his own. The next morning Pigot did not appear as usual. No one entered his room until the bells were ringing for church; then a boy who did odd chores about the kitchen and outhouses was sent in, and found him dead in his bed, his face, chest, and arms already discolored. "An effect only to be produced," said Stroud, evidently quoting the country paper, "by the infusion of the most virulent poison into the blood. In fact, a vial of the blood," laying down his fork, "and his stomach were sent here to a chemist for examination." "Then they arrested Myers ?" "The blockheads! As if his murder of Pigot would have any effect on the mortgage business!" Stroud looked rather damped. "There are other circumstances that tell against him," he said. But although I bluffed it off with Boyd Stroud, I was secretly disquieted. Joe was not the man to reason, pro or con. He was a pig-headed fool when his prejudices were concerned; the very temperament on which revenge would have a maddening impulse. In the two months that elapsed before the trial (for it was brought before the next court) I studied the minutia of the case with a more rigid scrutiny than I had often bestowed on my own heaviest strokes of business; but I had a strange feeling that made it impossible for me to talk of it, even to Jane. Nor did she speak of it to me. When the L- County Times was brought in we passed the yellow sleazy sheet from one to the other without a word. Two weeks before the trial, however, one evening, she laid it down, and sat resting her elbows on the table, and her head in her hands. "You are very busy just now, Philip ?" at last. "Yes. I'm on the track at last of that Sleaman lay. It is just three years since I undertook that job." (I've heard men in my line warn each other never to trust a petticoat; but I will say that Jane's clear head and ready wit have stood me in good place many's the time in my tightest puzzles. So I keep her posted generally.) "You will not be able to leave town, then, this month ?" (Bless your soul! I knew what that little woman was up to from her first word.) "Yes; I am going out of town next week." "To L―?” quickly. "Yes, Jane. I'll see what I can do." "God bless you, Philip!" her blue eyes filling, and her pink cheek flushed. "Don't scruple to sacrifice any money to go. I feel sure it will all be right if you are there. You don't know how I have prayed for that poor Myers; such a simple-hearted, dogged soul as he is. And there's nobody there with a grain of wit to help him through: I see that," tapping the paper with her finger impatiently. It did not make our evening less warm and cozy that Jane overrated her great lumbering husband so much, as you may suppose. Well, I went down to L the next Monday: a half-day's journey by railway, the rest by the old coaching-tiresome enough. I stopped a bit out of town at the Weirich Inn; for, although I had not visited my old home for nearly a dozen years, and, except by Stroud, Myers himself, and one or two others, stood no chance of recognition, I thought it best to keep quiet. It would do Joe no good with the thick-headed jury that he had a town "special" on his side. "Set a thief to catch a thief" is a motto with the country people. "No, this is a private stroke of business." He stopped a minute. "I see," gravely, "you've come down to look after Myers. I heard you were old chums. Well, I'm glad of it; but it's of little use, Caldwell, I'm afraid." "Is it so squally for Joe, then ?" "Yes." He went on to outline the evidence as it stood then. Purely circumstantial, but just such as would tell on a jury like the one that would be apt to try Myers. After the men parted at supper (Joe sullen and cursing under his breath), Pigot had gone straight to his room to write letters, and had not left it that night. Myers sat moodily by the dining-room stove, his face buried in his hands, and on Bob Fawcett's coming in to chat an hour with the Squire, got up and went out without speaking; did not return until after ten that night, when Fawcett and Hall heard him go up to his own room, and laughed to themselves at Joe's ill-temper. Hall and the cook had seen him meanwhile walking up and down the path to the stables. Mrs. "Now nobody in L- could comprehend a man's working off excited feeling by pacing about in the dark and cold," said Garfield. "Only a murder could warrant such conduct to them. Fawcett left the house at half past ten. Hall reports that all was quiet in Pigot's and Myers's rooms when he went to bed, and farther evidence there is none, except that of Dr. Hopper. who passed the house about one o'clock on his way to visit a patient. He says there was a bright light in two of the upper windows, caused apparently by some one carrying a candle from place to place. The windows are those of Pigot's The town of L- is one of those dead-alive villages in the low, rolling Pennsylvanian hills which wakens up on Sundays long enough for its inhabitants to pace slowly to Seceder church, and listen to sermons three hours long. It has its wooden market-place, to which a dozen wagons repair leisurely twice a week from the neighboring farms; a squat brick tavern with a pump and trough before the door, where the coach stops once a day; the court-house on the edge of the town, shut up except for two weeks in the year, its pavement overgrown with grass and star-wort; no other central objects of interest, unless, indeed, you count Jim Allen's smithy and young Bob Fawcett's smart drug-shop down at the corner. You may guess, therefore, the buzz and hurry of the town as the time drew near for the county court, when the dusty house would be open and a trial for murder going on in it-a case, too, belonging entirely to themselves. They were a good, amiable herd of people down in L; but they did gloat over that murder, both men and women. It was market-day when I arrived-a cool October day. I put on a farm-room." er's coat and felt-hat, and walked from the Weirich house into town. How the smell of the hemlock woods and stubble brought back the old turnip-digging days to me, when Myers and I worked in Hall's truck-patch! I meant to call on Hall as I went in, but seeing some carriages in the lane as I passed put it off until my return, and made straight for Garfield's of fice. Garfield was prosecuting attorney: I had met him once or twice in the city, and found him to be a sharp, wide-awake fellow, with sufficient good-feeling at bottom to keep him honest. He was conducting the matter against Myers alone, and I knew could give me clearer insight into it than Joe's own counsel, a muddyheaded old chap, who belonged to L since he was born. I think his name was Woodsel. Garfield was a New Yorker. He had a dingy little office, up two pair of stairs, hung round with maps, and full of tobacco-smoke, for he had a pipe in his mouth and was smoking while he worked out a problem in chess. That's the way these fellows in country towns idle out their lives, and live meanwhile on the fat of the land. "What the deuce! Caldwell!" he said, eying me from head to foot. "I took you for Sanderson off the Ridge Farm. Sit down, sit down! What have you been about in the last year? Ferreting out state secrets, eh?" "The chemist who analyzed the blood-?" "Alleges the presence of poison, but curiously enough can not define its nature. How malignant it was we can judge by the effects." "But there was no wound, Mr. Garfield?" "Yes, there was," drawing his chair closer. "Now to my mind that's the oddest part of the affair. The discoloration of the head and neck all appeared to proceed, radiate, I might say, from two minute punctures in the throat just below the ear, not larger than if made by a needle. The poison used must, therefore, have been of the subtlest nature." "Now, Garfield," I exclaimed, "I leave it to your common sense to say if Joe Myers was apt to have any knowledge of such Borgia-like treachery? Bah! I always take a man's groundwork of character into account. Myers would have given the fellow a wallop with the axe or kitchen shovel, perhaps, but as for puncturing with needles- I'm glad I know this. It satisfies me. Let who will have done the deed Myers is clear." it will be by no plotting of his. He is running "Clear-headed, eh?" "Caldwell, I wish you'd call on her," he said, earnestly "If there's any link dropped, or hint to be given, she is the one to help you. She has been with me once or twice to talk the matter over. Go this morning. It's a thing of life and death to her, and so far she has been fighting alone." "Where is Hall? in the matter?" girl, almost as much in earnest as she, and thoroughly en rapport with her. We were alone in the little "keeping-room :" and even to me there was something oddly strange in the contrast of the quiet of the hazy noon without, the garden blooms of purple and crimson hollyhocks and dahlias, the sleepy hum of the bees in the sun, and within the pale, intent face of this woman, and the smothered feeling in her soul of which it but feebly hinted. Her little school had vacation now: "it happened well, for I could not have thought of any thing else, and— this," she said, her hands clasped on the table before her, working together as if she were in a spasm. Otherwise she was perfectly still. She Has he made no exertion did not seem to doubt me from the first. "I know you will do what you can. But I have thought and thought, and nothing comes of it. And it matters to me," her voice growing low. "He is all I have." When I spoke cheerfully"You don't know the people here," she said, in the same low, hopeless tone. "They are hounding him on to his death, because they always join in the same outcry. They don't know enough of life to judge fairly." But she was not bitter even then. "They all like Joe; they don't mean to be unjust. But it is a new thing-a murder; so they talk and argue day "Well, yes. But you see Hall is a slowbrained fellow, not used to look out sharply for any thing but his own interest. Susan's quick. All that Hall can urge is the point that Myers had no object to serve in the murder, as it would not actually alter his own position, and that Pigot had no money with him if he had wished to rob. Now nobody would suspect Joe of any motive but revenge." I was silent. An odd idea struck me. money with him? No "Pigot had brothers in Waynesboro'? One by day to keep up the excitement. They don't is a wool-dealer, I believe-" "And the other is suspected of carrying on an underhand lottery on a tolerably extensive scale." see the harm it does," with a sudden motion of the hand to her forehead, checked before made. I saw how thick and swollen the veins in her neck and head were. "A case of brain-fever "Humph, yes! Well, I think I will take in less than a week," I thought. "She must your advice and call on the girl." have something new to think of." I drew my chair sharply up to the pine table. "Please attend to me, Miss Birt," I said. Woodsel, he is a mere log; I remember him of old. The trial comes off in two weeks; of this time I can spare four days from other business to devote to it." "Four days!" She smiled, bitterly; her very lips were white and dry. Before I called, however, I stopped in the book-store and scribbled a letter to John Pigot, of Waynesboro'. It went by that night's mail."If Myers is saved, you and I must do it. For The Birts lived in a little quiet lane, running down from the village street to the creek. They lived there when I was a boy, when Susy and I and a dozen others speared for frogs in the pond at the back of the garden. She was only a fat, giddy, freckled school-girl then, but had left a pleasant impression on me somehow. The house was unaltered. I stepped up on the shaky old wooden porch, covered with the same coral honey-suckle, and caught a glimpse of Mrs. Birt's milk-pans airing by the pump just as they did twelve years ago. But it would have been hard to recognize the thin pale woman who opened the door for me. The freckles were there on the homely, grave face as on the chubby, dimpled one of long ago, and the same mass of nut-brown hair pushed behind the ears, but that was all of the likeness. There was nothing pretty in this woman's face. Something better than beauty, maybe; it grew on me as I talked to her; a rare intelligence in the mobility of the lips and inflation of the delicate nostril; and in the quiet eyes a sort of thoroughness, truth-a melancholy fidelity, such as you see in the eyes of some horses that have been kindly used. A man in my business soon learns whom to trust. In five minutes I was talking of every phase of this matter with this "You think that is a narrow plank to interpose between a man and death? It will be enough, God helping us. My belief is this: that Pigot, most probably, had money with him-that he was murdered by some one cognizant of the fact; there is a sharp gang, I know, in the outskirts of L-county. I am the more convinced of the truth of this guess by my knowledge of Hall's house; for, if you will remember, there is a slanting roof from the second story back by which an expert climber could easily have reached the chambers unheard. Let us but catch the slightest clew to such an attempt and we are safe. I leave you to watch; I can give but two days now, two at the time of the trial. Meanwhile I mean to prove that Pigot had money with him; the establishment of any other motive than revenge will be a strong premise in Joe's behalf." I stopped short there, with half of my real thought untold; for the fact was, I wanted to occupy her mind by this harangue as much as any thing else. She had followed me, a curious tances I supposed the murdered man to be the change working out on her face, a sort of child-bearer), had gone West two days before Pigot's ish, breathless eagerness, her big dark eyes death. I was tired of dogging the meagre evigrowing wet, her thin cheeks red. When I had dence up and down the village streets, trying to finished she drew a gasping breath. "I see! He's safe, Joe is! Joe-" put her hand on my arm, and then turned to the window with a nervous half-cry and half-laugh. She was so much more credulous and silly and lovable a woman than I had expected to find when Garfield talked of her clear head. If ever this bout was over wouldn't Jane delight in coddling and making much of the girl up in the little parlor on Green Hill! "It is growing late," I said, rising; "I will only see you once again, Miss Birt, most probably. I may have to run down to Waynesboro' to-night, and to-day I must sift the evidence. You will communicate with Myers ?" "I go there every evening," turning with the flush and trembling smile yet on her face. foist some new bearing into it. Meagre as it was, the facts were sharp and direct enough with these L people, I saw, to carry poor Joe to the gallows, and I was powerless. The atmosphere of the town infected me, I believe; it was dull, ignorant, lethargic, from the first. Myers's doom had appeared a thing as certain to them as the rising of the sun on the sultry day that was to see it. Insensibly I found myself swerving into that habit of thinking. I wanted to get out-to thrust the whole matter away from me. The very glare of the sun on the steep, narrow brick pavements choked and taunted me with the useless efforts I had made. The afternoon before I left Garfield called me up as I was passing his office window. A broadshouldered, stumpy, boorish-looking man was sitting on the edge of a chair balancing a shiny low hat, such as sailors wear, between his knees. I knew the dead black eyes swaddled in fat, and the low forehead well, though the face had sharpened, and the hair and whiskers turned gray since I saw them. 66 Squire Hall"-holding out my hand—“I have called twice, but could not find you." No, Philip, I've been up to town. I-" The old man looked troubled; his voice was unsteady. "can "The Squire," said Garfield, heartily, not rest about Joe. He has been up to engage other counsel. Glendenning is on the defense now with Woodsel." "What do you think of my choice, Caldwell?" said the old man, anxiously, pulling at his cravat, his hand nervous, as I remembered it long ago—a man always unsure of himself. The old Susy Birt was not dead yet; but I shook hands with her gravely, and turned down into the grassy lane leading to the village. It was past noon the bees were droning lazily into the great purple iron-weeds along the fences: there was a heavy smell of harvest fields in the air: far off a faint, blue mist on the horizon hills shimmered like steam in the yellow August sunshine; little brown chippeys hopped right in my path as if we were the oldest sort of friends. Now I'm not a man that cares for these things, but I could not help walking slower, taking off my hat, and feeling what a pleasant, warm-hearted world it was, after all, and how it did a man's very bones good to be alive. Then came the thought of Joe yonder in that brick jail, of the girl I had just left-of the black death waiting for him in one of these early pleasant days; the two lives God had made going out suddenly in darkness"He was the highest-priced of those city chaps, and loss; homely, common lives enough, maybe, but full of a wholesome health-of an infinite tenderness-good for much in the world. Nobody to save them but me-! The thought came on me terribly there in that quiet lane and warm sunshine, I do not know why. I remember stopping suddenly, looking at my big muscles, feeling how weak they were, how dull my clogged brain-humbly; and if Phil Caldwell asked help to bring the truth to light that day you need not laugh at him. Some one was as near and quick to hear the detective in the sunny lane as if he had been the preacher yonder in the stone hill-chapel. However, one does not often understand the fashion in which their prayers are heard. When I started back to Philadelphia, two days after, I got into the yellow stage-coach thoroughly disheartened-in fact, with a sense of utter defeat. If I thought at all of that little passage in the lane it was but to smile bitterly at it. I am not going into detail about those wasted days. I had discovered nothing in Waynesboro' to prove that Pigot had money about him; his brother, the lottery-dealer (of whose underhand remit so I thought must be the sharpest-eh ?" "Not a safe general rule, but it will serve in this case. Did you want me, Garfield?" "Only to warn you of a new point against Myers," gravely pulling something from his pocket. "How? No! Eh?" The old man stooped eagerly over the table, so as to hide the object from me, his face turning pale as he looked up. "It is no point against Joe; it means nothing. Don't let them turn you against the boy, Philip!" "Squire!" said Garfield. He turned to me a little heated. "His feeling for Myers makes him unjust to me. I have barely done my duty in this case, and God knows how unwillingly that was done!" "But this point against Myers?" "Nott, the jailer, found this secreted in the coat Joe had on when arrested," handing me a coarsely-cut key, apparently that of a valise or large port-folio. "It opens the case in which Pigot kept his papers-a spring-lock, you see. The inference is, Myers had obtained the key, but was probably deterred by some noise from securing the mortgage.". "What did Joe want with the mortgage?" of the town: every shop and corner seethed with said the Squire, starting up fiercely. "The boy is no fool! Would he have clenched the proof of the murder on himself?" "He has done it, I'm afraid," said Garfield. Hall stood looking down into his hat, fumbling with the rim, the dark blood coming and going to his face. I was touched by his emotion: it was unexpected, I confess. an excitement people in cities can not imagine; the very boy that blacked your boots was grave with importance. As I finished my steak and potatoes the landlord touched me. "Mr. Glendenning is in his room," in a mysterious whisper; "wishes to see you, Sir." Glendenning was a little blue-eyed man, thorough, acute, direct; giving himself utterly up, "I'm glad you take this case up as you do, body and soul, to the business of each hour; Squire." He looked me full in the face. "I did not at first. It stunned me. And I didn't know what Joe was to me; come eleven years in February he's worked on the place. It's a hard blow, Philip!" running his hand uncertainly through his white hair, his face turning actually livid. "I'm not used to changes. I'd give my right arm out from the socket," facing me suddenly, "to see Joe Myers a free man to-day!" Garfield was standing thoughtfully by the table: the key touched it. Hall started at the noise, curiously. "For that key it proves nothing!" he said, in a shrill voice. "You don't think it weighs in the evidence, Caldwell ?" coming up to me, patting my coat in an inane, pleading way. "With the jury you will have-every thing." He turned away slowly; stood silent a moment. "I'll go, gentlemen," he said, in a low voice. "I'm not well." As he went I noticed that he staggered. "I did not think the old buffer had so much feeling," muttered Garfield, shutting the door after him. consequently one of the most successful lawyers at the Philadelphia bar (I use fictitious names, of course). "It's a bad business, Caldwell," when I was seated at the other side of the oil-lamp. "If I gain an acquittal the verdict would be, in verity, only not proven;' and the man lives under a stigma worse than death, to my mind. Make the best of three days. I must go back to-night. Here is something you can turn to account, perhaps," watching me sharply as I glanced at a bit of paper he handed me. "I tore it from Pigot's memorandum-book. You see? 'To dep't. Sept. 3. Phil. M. and F. Bank. $40,000.' That means," his uneasy fingers playing on his lip, "just what I believed from the first: that Pigot had a sum of money to deposit, and for that money he was murdered." "Exactly. Now prove it, my fine fellow," jumping up nimbly and going about the room like a sparrow. "One dollar of that money found would weigh more in Myers's favor than all evidence for his character. Where is it? If Pigot had it in trust, where is the owner? His own books show no such sum in hand." "Well, do your best, Caldwell. For the girl's sake, at least," growing suddenly quiet. have seen her?" "In the jail. Yes." "You "What an exquisite face she has!" half to himself. "It put me in mind of the Francesca di Rimini.” I knew nothing of the Di Rimini woman, and I was a little surprised to hear of Susy's beauty; so I thought best to keep quiet. I did not see Hall again, leaving by daylight the next morning. I had not the heart to go to the Birts' cottage; why should I? However, as I left Garfield's office that evening I saw Susy coming out of the lane on the street, on her way to the jail. I noticed her step was quick and eager; a hopeful glow yet in her face. She had a bit of a pink bow in her brown dress (Jane would have liked that), and carried Glendenning set off that night. But in the a bunch of clove pinks and tansy under her two days I did nothing. I was like a man shawl. Well! well! People looked after her holding an endless skein of thread; one broken with sad, grave faces; their voices had some-end, and the whole would have been unwound thing tender in them as they gave her good-cleanly; but the end did not come into my finmorning, too, I noticed. Steve Derrick's little daughter ran out from the shop with something wrapped up in a napkin-a hard cheese-cake, I think. "Take it to Uncle Joe; I made it for him-me, Miss Susy, mind!" Susan took it and hurried on, then turning back kissed the child passionately. "God bless you, Phoebe Derrick!" she said. I remembered that Myers was "Uncle Joe" for all the youngsters in L. When I came back to L it was but two days before the trial. The case had excited much interest through the State, Glendenning having thrown the effect of his name on Joe's side. Such things tell. I arrived after night. Court had met, it was easy to know by the state VOL. XXX.-No. 175.-D gers. The day of the trial was gray and dull, a fine drizzling rain falling without cessation. The sky seemed to settle down heavily on the low hills, shutting in the dingy little village and the deed that was to be done in it to-day. Despite the lowering weather, however, a steady tide of people had set in from the neighboring counties, beginning the night before: a gala day with such a relish of horror L- had never known. I remember listening to the rumble of wheels all the night, and when morning broke standing smoking at the tavern window, watching the muddy jostle of buggies, horsemen, Jersey wagons in the narrow street, and wondering how |