While the Squire had never been a very popular man, in a general way, he was not known to have a single enemy who would be likely to do so dastardly a deed. Neither was the Squire in the habit of keeping money about the house, so that if the murderer knew the ways of his victim, he could not hope to gain a rich reward, therefore some motive besides robbery must have actuated the crime. What this motive was, had yet to be discovered, provided the adage came true that "murder will out." Of those who were unfriendly to the Squire, none was so prominent to mind as his nephew, Milton Derr, no one would be more profited by the Squire's death than he, for he was next of kin, and, his uncle being unmarried, the property would revert to him. This point was especially emphasized--the uncle being unmarried, and the fact was strongly commented upon, that it was on the very eve of the Squire's marriage that he was murdered. Could the motive have been jealousy? The cause of the open rupture between the two men was generally known--that a woman was at the bottom of it and this woman was the one to whom the Squire was to have been wedded. The whole story was told and retold with many variations. The neighbors spoke of these things in guarded undertones and with grave shakings of the head, and although no outspoken accusations were made, there was an undercurrent of suspicion, deepening into belief, and growing hourly, like a stream that rapidly swells beyond its banks when fed by countless minor tributaries. Public opinion was slowly and surely fastening the deed on the nephew's shoulders. These vague rumors and surmises were conveyed from time to time by Mrs. Brown to her daughter's ears, and while the girl steadfastly and persistently asserted Milton Derr's innocence, there was, nevertheless, a horrible and slowly strengthening conviction at work in her own bosom which she could neither silence nor subdue--a conviction that warned her she was building on false hopes, which might at any moment crumble at the touch of circumstantial evidence, and reveal her lover not only to the world, but to her own prejudiced eyes, as a murderer whose soul was stained with a dark crime. Closely allied to this harassing fear was a far different feeling that she could neither still nor repress, though it seemed a heartless and even cruel one--a feeling of great thankfulness that the Squire's untimely death had relieved her of a sacrifice that would have been but a living death to her.