"Here's a note from Merrick. He sailed a week sooner than he expected--has left New York, and will be here to-night. If I had only put the case in your hands earlier! I had a hope that you could clear the little girl. But it's too late. She'll take flight as soon as she hears he is coming. Scheffer says it's a miserable, bloody muddle, and that I was wrong to stir it up." "I do not agree with Dr. Scheffer," I said quietly. "I am going now to the library. In half an hour send Miss Waring to me." "You have not yet been presented to her?" "So much the better. I wish her to regard me as a lawyer simply. State to her as formally as you choose who I am, and that I desire to see her on business." I seated myself in the library; placed pen and ink, and some legal-looking documents, selected at random, before me. Red tape and the formal pomp of law constitute half its force with women and men of Louisa's calibre. I had hardly arranged myself and my materials when the door slowly opened, and she entered. She was alarmed, yet wary. To see a naturally hearty, merry little body subjected for years to this nervous strain, with a tragic idea forced into a brain meant to be busied only with dress, cookery, or babies, appeared to me a pitiful thing. "Miss Waring?" reducing the ordinary courtesies to a curt, grave nod. "Be seated, if you please." I turned over my papers slowly, and then looked up at her. I had, I saw, none of the common feminine shrewdness to deal with; need expect no subtle devices of concealment; no clever doublings; nothing but the sheer obstinacy which is an unintellectual woman's one resource. I would ignore it and her--boldly assume full possession of the ground at the first word. "My errand to this house, Miss Waring, is in part the investigation of a murder in 1854, of which you were the sole witness--that of Houston Simms----" I stopped. The change in her face appalled me. She had evidently not expected so direct an attack. In fact, Beardsley told me afterward that it was the first time the subject had been broached to her in plain words. However, she made no reply, and I proceeded in the same formal tone: "I shall place before you the facts which are in my possession, and require your assent to such as are within your knowledge. On the afternoon of Tuesday, October 5, 1854, Houston Simms left the Pine Valley station, carrying a valise containing a large sum of money. You----" She had been sitting on the other side of the table, looking steadily at me. She rose now. She wore a blue morning dress, with lace ruffles and other little fooleries in which women delight, and I remember being shocked with the strange contrast between this frippery and the speechless dread and misery of her face. She gained control of her voice with difficulty. "Who has said that I was a witness of the murder?" she gasped. "I always explained that I was in another part of the wood. I went to aunty Huldah----"