We then went out upon the lawn. I took my companion to the tree beneath which I had stood, when that dark figure had approached, and passed me, to crouch beneath the window from which the death-candles shone. From this spot, the bay-window was not visible, that being at the back of the house and this on the side. Mr. Burton looked carefully about him, walking all over the lawn, going up under the parlor windows, and thence pursuing his way into the garden and around to the bay-window. It was quite natural to search closely in this precinct for some mark or footsteps, some crushed flowers, or broken branches, or scratches upon the wall, left by the thief, if he or she had made his or her entrance at this spot. Going over the ground thus, inch by inch, I observed a bit of white lawn, soiled and weather-beaten, lying under a rose-bush a few feet from the window. I picked it up. It was a woman's handkerchief, of fine lawn, embroidered along the edge with a delicate running vine, and a spray of flowers at the corner. "One of the young ladies has dropped it, some time ago," I said, "or it has blown across from the kitchen grass-plot, where the linen is put out to dry." Then I examined the discolored article more closely, and, involved in the graceful twinings of the spray of flowers, I saw worked the initials--"L. S." "Leesy Sullivan," said my companion, taking it from my hand. "It seems too dainty an article for her ownership," I said, at last, for, at first, I had been quite stupefied. "A woman's vanity will compass many things beyond her means. This thing she has embroidered with her own needle--you remember, she is a proficient in the art." "Yes, I remember. She may have lost it Sunday night, during that visit which I observed; and the wind has blown it over into this spot." "You forget that there has been no rain since that night. This handkerchief has been beaten into the grass and earth by a violent rain. A thorn upon this bush has pulled it from her pocket as she passed, and the rain has set its mark upon it, to be used as a testimony against her." "The evidence seems to conflict. She can not be a man and woman both." "Why not?" was the quiet reply. "There may be a principal and an accomplice. A woman is a safer accomplice for a man than one of his own sex--and _vice versa_." The face which I had seen, in its despair, the face of Leesy Sullivan, rose in my memory, full of passion, marked in every soft yet impressive lineament with slumbering power--"such a nature," I thought, "can be maddened into crime, but it will not consort with villainy."