The tablets and pencils that had been distributed along the table had not been neglected. The guests, without exception, had been drawing or scribbling; Colton had amused himself by sketching the governor's profile. Burgess seemed not to be giving his undivided attention to the governor's review of the case. He continued to fidget, and his eyes swept the table with veiled amusement. Then he tapped a bell and a waiter appeared. "Pardon me a moment, governor, till the cigars are passed again." In his round with the cigar tray the Jap, evidently by prearrangement, collected the tablets and laid them in front of Burgess. "Changed your mind about the limerick contest, Web?" asked someone. "Not at all," said Burgess carelessly; "the tablets have fulfilled their purpose. It was only a silly idea of mine anyhow." They noticed, however, that a tablet was left at the still vacant place that awaited the belated guest, and they wondered at this, surmising that Burgess had planned the dinner carefully and that the governor's discussion of the Avery case was by connivance with their host. With a quickening of interest they drew their chairs closer to the table. "The prosecuting attorney who represented the State in the trial is now a judge of the Circuit Court," the governor resumed when the door closed upon the waiter. "I have had many talks with him about this case. He confesses that there are things about it that still puzzle him. The evidence was purely circumstantial, as I have already indicated; but circumstantial evidence, as Thoreau once remarked, may be very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk! But when two men have spent a day together in the house of one of them, and the other is found dead in a lonely place not far away, and suspicion attaches to no one but the survivor--not even the tramp who usually figures in such speculations--a jury of twelve farmers may be pardoned for taking the State's view of the matter." "The motive you spoke of, business jealousy, doesn't seem quite adequate unless it could be established that they had quarreled and that there was a clear showing of enmity," suggested Fullerton, the lawyer. "You are quite right, and the man who prosecuted Avery admits it," the governor answered. "There may have been a third man in the affair," suggested Ramsay, "and I suppose the cynical must have suggested the usual woman in the case."