“A word to the wise is sufficient;” she laughed and turned her pretty face toward the coroner’s once. But she was a woman and could not help glancing back, and, meeting my dubious look, she broke into an arch smile and naively added this remark: “Loretta is a busybody ashamed of her own curiosity. So much there can be no harm in telling you. When one’s knowledge has been gained by lingering behind doors and peeping through cracks, one is not so ready to say what one has seen and heard. Loretta is in that box, and being more than a little scared of the police, was glad to let her anxiety and her fears overflow into a sympathizing ear. Won’t she be surprised when she is called up some fine day by the coroner! I wonder if she will blame me for it?”

“She will never think of doing so,” I basely assured my little friend, with an appreciative glance at her sparkling eye and dimpled cheek.

The arch little creature started to move off again. As she did so, she cried: “Be good, and don’t let Durbin cut in on you;” but stopped for the second time when half across the street, and when, obedient to her look, I hastily rejoined her, she whispered demurely: “Oh, I forgot to tell you something that I heard this morning, and which nobody but yourself has any right to know. I was following your commands and buying groceries at Simpkins’, when just as I was coming out with my arms full, I heard old Mr. Simpkins mention Mr. Jeffrey’s name and with such interest that I naturally wanted to hear what he had to say. Having no real excuse for staying, I poked my finger into a bag of sugar I was carrying, till the sugar ran out and I had to wait till it was put up again. This did not take long, but it took long enough for me to hear the old grocer say that he knew Mr. Jeffrey, and that that gentleman had come into his shop only a day or two before his wife’s death, to buy—candles!”

The archness with which this was said, together with the fact itself, made me her slave forever. As her small figure faded from sight down the avenue, I decided to take her advice and follow up whatever communication she had to make to the coroner by a confession of my own suspicions and what they had led me into. If he laughed—well, I could stand it. It was not the coroner’s laugh, nor even the major’s, that I feared; it was Durbin’s.

X.
FRANCIS JEFFREY

Jinny had not been gone an hour from the coroner’s office when an opportunity was afforded for me to approach that gentleman myself.

With few apologies and no preamble, I immediately entered upon my story which I made as concise and as much to the point as possible. I did not expect praise from him, but I did look for some slight show of astonishment at the nature of my news. I was therefore greatly disappointed, when, after a moment’s quiet consideration, he carelessly remarked:

“Very good! very good! The one point you make is excellent and may prove of use to us. We had reached the same conclusion, but by another road. You ask, ‘Who blew out the candle?’ We, ‘Who tied the pistol to Mrs. Jeffrey’s arm?’ It could not have been tied by herself. Who was her accessory then? Ah, you didn’t think of that.”

I flushed as if a pail of hot water had been dashed suddenly over me. He was right. The conclusion he spoke of had failed to strike me. Why? It was a perfectly obvious one, as obvious as that the candle had been blown out by another breath than hers; yet, absorbed in my own train of thought, I had completely overlooked it. The coroner observing my embarrassment, smiled, and my humiliation was complete or would have been had Durbin been there, but fortunately he was not.

“I am a fool,” I cried. “I thought I had discovered something. I might have known that there were keener minds than mine in this office—”