"Certainly not. I was with a friend at least sixty miles away, near Chicago." "Can you prove this?" "If necessary, of course; but what in the world is the matter, Dyke? I hope you wouldn't accuse me of deception." "No. Will you come with me to Bragg's?" "Certainly." And then the two men walked away together. There was a solemn expression pervading the face of Dyke Darrel. He had experienced many strange things during his detective life, but this latest phase puzzled him the most. He could swear that he saw the face of Elliston at the window of the house in the gulch on the previous night, yet the assertion from his friend that he was fifty miles away at the time seemed honest enough. Having been long in the detective work, Dyke Darrel had grown to be suspicious, and so he was fast losing faith in the good intentions of his New York friend. He had suddenly resolved on a test that he believed would prove effectual in setting all doubts at rest. Arrived at the Bragg dwelling, the detective conducted Harper Elliston at once to the room where the remains of the beautiful, dead girl lay encoffined. CHAPTER XIV DYKE DARREL ASTOUNDED. Dyke Darrel lifted a cloth from the face of the dead, and Harper Elliston stood gazing down upon the features of wronged and murdered Sibyl Osborne. The detective watched the expression of his companion's countenance closely. With bated breath the man-hunter glued his gaze upon the face of the man bending over the casket. "What a sad face, and yet most wonderful in its beauty. Who is she? A daughter of the house?" Harper turned and regarded Dyke Darrel questioningly, a sympathetic look in his black eyes. "Do you not know her?" "_I_ know her? You forget that I am a stranger in this part of the West, Dyke." "She, too, was a stranger here, Elliston. Her home was in Burlington, and she has been brought to this by a villain who ought to pass the remainder of his days behind prison bars, if not conclude them at a rope's end. Do you know Hubert Vander?" There was a stern ring in the detective's voice, and a look of deep, indignant feeling pervading his face. All the time he kept his gaze riveted on Elliston. That gentleman stood the ordeal without flinching, however. "Hubert Vander? The name is a new one to me, Dyke." "Indeed!" A sneer curled the lip of the detective. "What do you mean by that?" questioned Mr. Elliston. "Am I to understand that you connect ME in any way with this girl's death, or that I am a friend to this Hubert Vander of whom you speak?" "Your pretended indignation will not deceive, Harper Elliston. Look at THIS, and tell me what you think of it," said Dyke Darrel, with the sternness of steel. The detective laid the photograph he had obtained in the Black Hollow cabin in the hand of Mr. Elliston. The New Yorker did start then. He gazed long and constantly at the pictured face. "What have you to say now, Harper Elliston?" demanded Dyke Darrel, in an awful voice.