And with a look which, if she had observed it, might have roused her to a sense of the critical position in which she stood, he paused and held his breath for her reply. It did not come. "Imogene?" "I hear." Cold and hard the words sounded--his hand went like lightning to his heart. "Are you going to answer?" he asked, at last. "Yes." "What is that answer to be, Yes or No?" She turned upon him her large gray eyes. There was misery in their depths, but there was a haughtiness, also, which only truth could impart. "My answer is No!" said she. And, without another word, she glided from the room. Next morning, Mr. Byrd found three notes awaiting his perusal. The first was a notification from the coroner to the effect that the Widow Clemmens had quietly breathed her last at midnight. The second, a hurried line from Mr. Ferris, advising him to make use of the day in concluding a certain matter of theirs in the next town; and the third, a letter from Mr. Orcutt, couched in the following terms: MR. BYRD: _Dear Sir_--I have seen the person named between us, and I here state, upon my honor, that she is in possession of no facts which it concerns the authorities to know. TREMONT B. ORCUTT. V. HORACE BYRD. But now, I am cabin'd, cribbed, confin'd, bound in To saucy doubts and fears.--MACBETH. HORACE BYRD was by birth and education a gentleman. He was the son of a man of small means but great expectations, and had been reared to look forward to the day when he should be the possessor of a large income. But his father dying, both means and expectations vanished into thin air, and at the age of twenty, young Horace found himself thrown upon the world without income, without business, and, what was still worse, without those habits of industry that serve a man in such an emergency better than friends and often better than money itself. He had also an invalid mother to look after, and two young sisters whom he loved with warm and devoted affection; and though by the kindness and forethought of certain relatives he was for a time spared all anxiety on their account, he soon found that some exertion on his part would be necessary to their continued subsistence, and accordingly set about the task of finding suitable employment, with much spirit and no little hope. But a long series of disappointments taught him that young men cannot leap at a bound into a fine salary or even a promising situation; and baffled in every wish, worn out with continued failures, he sank from one state of hope to another, till he was ready to embrace any prospect that would insure ease and comfort to the helpless beings he so much loved.