They ran something after this fashion: "Could it be possible that Joad had killed Edermont? There seemed to be no motive for his committing the crime, and he was not the kind of man to run needlessly into danger. Yet the discovery about the clock was certainly very strange. I knew it was correct on the night of the murder," meditated Dora. "I set my watch by it before I went upstairs. That was at half-past nine, and my watch has been right ever since. When Meg looked at it in the morning, it was an hour wrong; therefore, somebody must have put it wrong with intent. It is impossible that so excellent a clock could suddenly slip for an hour, and then go on again. Could Joad have been in the house on that night, and have put it on an hour? At the time of the murder the clock struck one, and at that hour Joad, according to his own showing and Mr. Pride's corroboration, was in the cottage. If the clock had been put wrong, the murder must have taken place at twelve, since it was an hour fast in the morning. There was ample time for Joad to commit the crime at twelve, and be back in his cottage by one." Dora got up, and walked restlessly to and fro. She could not quite understand why the clock should have been put on an hour, so as to give a false time, when there was no one to hear it in the night. That she had woke up and heard it strike was quite an accident, although there had been nights when she had heard every hour, every chime, strike till dawn. Suddenly she remembered that once she had said something to Joad about her sleepless nights. On the impulse of the moment she walked into the library. "Mr. Joad," she said to the old man, who was reading near the window, "that hall clock." It seemed to Dora that a pallor crept over the red face of the man she addressed. However, he looked up quietly enough, and spoke to her with the greatest calmness. "What about the hall clock, Miss Dora?" he asked in a puzzled tone. "It is disturbing me again. I really must have it removed. In the dead hours I hear it strike in the most ghostly, graveyard fashion. As it did on that night," she concluded under her breath. "Do you have many sleepless nights now?" "How do you know that I have sleepless nights at all?" she asked quickly. Joad looked at her in surprise. "You told me so yourself shortly before we lost Julian," he said quietly. "It was toothache, was it not?" "Yes--something of that sort," she answered carelessly. "But it is not toothache now. Still, I lie awake thinking." "Of me?" said Joad with a leer. "The week is not yet over, Mr. Joad," she said coldly; "till the end of it you have no right to ask me such a question. Good-bye for the present; I am going out on my bicycle." This was an excuse. Confident that Joad had altered the clock, on the chance that she would hear it during her sleepless nights, she was confident also that for such reason, and for a more terrible one, he had been in the house on the night of the murder.