It was possible that Allerton was lying, and that while he and the boy were gone the old woman had discovered the fire and painfully crawled down-stairs and out of the burning house; but, in that case, where was she? How could a feeble old woman thus vanish off the face of the earth? The next day the police explored the ruins. They half expected to find the bones of the unfortunate creature. They did not find a shred of anything that resembled bones. If Allerton had murdered his aunt, he had so contrived his crime as to destroy every vestige of the body; and granting him a motive to do such an atrocious deed, why should so venturesome and ingenious a murderer jeopard everything by a wild fairy tale? The reporters found themselves before a blank wall. “Maybe it _ain’t_ a fairy tale,” Amos Wickliff suggested one day, two days after the mystery. He was giving “the boys” a kind word on the court-house steps. “It’s to be hoped it is a true story,” said the youngest and naturally most hardened reporter, “since then he’ll die with a better conscience!” “They never can convict him on the evidence,” interrupted another man. “I don’t see how they can even hold him.” “That’s why folks are mad,” said the youngest reporter, with a pitying smile. “There’s something in the talk, then?” said Amos, shifting his cigar to the other side of his mouth. “_Are_ they going to lynch that feller?” asked another reporter. “Say so,” the first young man remarked, placidly; “a lot of the old lady’s chums are howling about stringing him up. They’ve the notion that she was burned alive, and they’re hot over it.” “That’s _your_ paper, old man; you had ’most two columns, and made it out Mrs. Kerby heard squealing _after_ the boy did; and pictured the horrible situation of the poor old helpless woman writhing in anguish, and the fire eating nearer and nearer. Great Scott! it made _me_ crawl to read it; and I saw a crowd down-town in the park, and if one fellow wasn’t reading your blasted blood-curdler out loud; and one woman was crying and telling about the old party lending her money to buy her husband’s coffin, and then letting her off paying. That made the crowd rabid. At every sentence they let off a howl. You needn’t be grinning like a wild-cat; it ain’t funny to that feller in jail, I bet. Is it, Amos?”