"I don't know about that; her story hangs together, she's sober enough now, and will be kept so till they have done with her. She says that the doctor came to their shanty late the night before the murder, and called John out; she crept to the keyhole and listened. She lost a good deal of what they said for a little while, they talked so low; then John raised his voice, and said with an oath, he'd take down the villain's pride for him a bit; he wondered the doctor had stood his cursed ugliness so long; for his part, he'd put a bullet through him to-morrow, with pleasure. The doctor hushed him, and said, 'Not so fast, John, not so fast, wait awhile; we must get a little more out of him before we send him to his long account. We'll settle up old scores with pleasure, after we've no further use for him. Attend to this little errand for me to-morrow, and don't let him slip, and that'll be the first step toward a reckoning.'" "Well, but I cannot see," said Mr. Rutledge, "what it all amounts to, even if the woman's testimony is received, which is more than doubtful. She didn't hear any names. Nobody has any doubt but that the doctor had plenty of enemies, and that her man John was a scoundrel, and I cannot see what else her evidence goes to prove." "It goes to prove that there was _somebody_ with whom the doctor was not on good terms, who has not appeared on the stage as yet, and of whom we want to get hold. It goes to prove, my dear sir, that the man John was sent to Brandon on a matter in some way connected with this person; and, to my mind, when we shall have, found out who that person was, we shall have found out who was the murderer of Dr. Hugh!" "But," said Phil, "what do the barkeeper and landlord of 'The Shades' say? Don't they know who he came to meet, and for whom he waited till eleven?" "John, it seems, 'kept dark,' lounged around the bar-room, and spoke little to any one, as was his manner, but went often to the door, and seemed to wait for some one. The barkeeper thinks, but is not sure, that it was he who was there once before during the morning, with a letter which he left, directed to a gentleman whose name he has forgotten, who never called for it." "Ah!" cried Phil, "now we shall get at it, I think. What became of the letter?" "The letter," interrupted Mr. Rutledge, "the letter that was left there that morning"---- I crushed the newspaper that lay beside me with my nervous hand; I smothered the cry that trembled on my lips, but my eyes burned on his face. He avoided them and went on. "The letter which was left there by some one, who, it is conjectured, only _conjectured_, may have been this man, was addressed to some person not at all known in Brandon, and who never came for it. It was opened and examined, and proved to be only the business circular of some importing house in New York. So all idea of tracing anything from that was given up, and the letter thrown aside."