I gave a sigh of relief. Winters's case was at last entrusted to good hands and the wisdom of my judgment in confiding in my friends was confirmed, but when my first selfish feeling of satisfaction had passed, I realized we were asking a great deal of Littell. He was no longer a young man and, as I knew, all his tastes and feelings must revolt against the nature of the task we had put upon him, and I looked over with some sense of regret for my action, but he sat there serenely smoking his cigar, and sipping his brandy as though nothing unusual had occurred. With his never-failing philosophy he had already resigned himself to the inevitable and whatever misgivings he may have had, they were evidently not going to affect his course from then on. I felt like a man from whom a great load had been lifted. Not only had I found some one to share the burden I had been staggering under for two weeks and which was daily growing heavier, but it was that one in whom before all others I placed the greatest confidence. It was Littell who recalled me from my abstraction to the consideration of the serious business we had in hand. Looking at his watch, he said: "It is four o'clock and I am ready to begin my work. You, Van!" he continued, "cannot be of any assistance just now, but Dick can take me to my client, for I want to talk with him and hear his story." "Do you wish to go now?" I asked. "There is no time to be lost and as you know I have no other serious duties to occupy me," he answered. Van Bult gazed at him with evident appreciation of the sacrifice he was making. "It is good of you, Littell," he said, "and I fancy the world will think none the less of you for the sacrifice you are making for a poor fellow who is nothing to you." Littell shook his head impatiently; he was never a man who liked compliments. "I have undertaken it, and that is all there is to it," he said. "Well," Van Bult replied, "we won't say anything more about it, but before I leave you, let me offer a suggestion that does not seem to have occurred to Dallas with all his theorizing." "What is that?" I asked. "Only that it seems to me if you be right in your opinion that Winters is not guilty, and the criminal some person who was involved in trouble with White or bore ill-will to him, that in such case the most likely person from whom to seek information should be Belle Stanton." He paused, but seeing that we were expectantly waiting for him to go on, continued: "She must know what person, if any, was likely to have left the ulster at her house, that is if she did not do so herself. She probably had a key to White's room. If he had a secret she more likely than any one else shared it with him; and if his affections for her were waning or straying, she could well have felt both the spirit of hate and revenge. 'Hell knows no fury like a woman scorned,'" he finished, impressively.