A tramp is run over by a street car and before dying confesses to having committed the murder, and at the judge’s funeral his brother, Colonel Smith, breaks down and acknowledges having killed the judge in order to get his watch. Mabel sends to Chicago and employs a skilled detective to work up the case.
Chapter III
A beautiful strange lady dressed in mourning comes to Plunkville and registers at the hotel as Jane Bumgartner. (The initials on the handkerchief!)
The next day a Chinaman is found who denies having killed the judge, and is arrested by the detective. The strange lady meets Charlie on the street, and, on smelling the smoke from his cigarette, faints. Mabel discards him and engages herself to the Chinaman.
Chapter IV
While the Chinaman is being tried for murder, Jane Bumgartner testifies that she saw the detective murder Judge Smith at the instance of the minister who conducted the funeral, and that Mabel is Charlie’s stepmother. The Chinaman is about to confess when footsteps are heard approaching. The next chapter will be the last, and it is safe to say that no one will find it easy to guess the ending of the story. To show how difficult this feat is, the last chapter is now given.
Chapter V
The footsteps prove to be those of Thomas R. Hefflebomer of Washington Territory, who introduces positive proof of having murdered the judge during a fit of mental aberration, and Mabel marries a man named Tompkins, whom she met two years later at Hot Springs.
Futility
To be so near—and then to vanish
Like some unreal creature of the sense;
To come so near that every fiber, tingling,
Makes ready welcome; then to surge
Back into the recesses of the strange,
Mysterious unknown. Ye gods!
What agony to feel thee slowly steal
Away from us when, with caught breath
And streaming eyes, and parted lips,
We fain would with convulsive gasp
And tortured features bow our frame
In one loud spasm of homage to thy spell!
But with what grief we find we can not do it;
The dream is o’er—we can not sneeze.