The disturbance to which I have alluded was of a peculiar kind. It was occasioned by the thick-set man making the spring which, for some minutes, he had evidently been meditating. It was not a tragic leap, however, but a decidedly comic one, and had for its end and aim the recovery of a handkerchief which he had taken from his pocket at the moment when the witness uttered the name of Smith, and, by a useless flourish in opening it, flirted from his hand to the floor. At least, so the amused throng interpreted the sudden dive which he made, and the heedless haste that caused him to trip over the gentleman's hat that stood on the floor, causing it to fall and another handkerchief to tumble out. But Mr. Byrd, who had a detective's insight into the whole matter, saw something more than appeared in the profuse apologies which the thick-set man made, and the hurried manner in which he gathered up the handkerchiefs and stood looking at them before returning one to his pocket and the other to its place in the gentleman's hat. Nor was Mr. Byrd at all astonished to observe that the stand which his fellow-detective took, upon resettling himself, was much nearer the unseen gentleman than before, or that in replacing the hat, he had taken pains to put it so far to one side that the gentleman would be obliged to rise and come around the corner in order to obtain it. The drift of the questions propounded to the witness at this moment opened his eyes too clearly for him to fail any longer to understand the situation. "Now at the hotel?" the coroner was repeating. "And came yesterday? Why, then, did you look so embarrassed when I mentioned his name?" "Oh--well--ah," stammered the man, "because he was there once before, though his name is not registered but once in the book." "He was? And on what day?" "On Tuesday," asserted the man, with the sudden decision of one who sees it is useless to attempt to keep silence. "The day of the murder?" "Yes, sir." "And why is his name not on the book at that time if he came to your house and put up?" "Because he did not put up; he merely called in, as it were, and did not take a meal or hire a room." "How did you know, then, that he was there? Did you see him or talk to him?" "Yes, sir." "And what did you say?" "He asked me for directions to a certain house, and I gave them." "Whose house?" "The Widow Clemmens', sir." Ah, light at last! The long-sought-for witness had been found! Coroner and jury brightened visibly, while the assembled crowd gave vent to a deep murmur, that must have sounded like a knell of doom--in one pair of ears, at least. "He asked you for directions to the house of Widow Clemmens. At what time was this?" "At about half-past eleven in the morning." The very hour! "And did he leave then?" "Yes, sir; after taking a glass of brandy." "And did you not see him again?" "Not till yesterday, sir." "Ah, and at what time did you see him yesterday?"