"She came out alone, certainly, but for what purpose I cannot tell," answered the puzzled soldier, who had never seen old Meg before, and he added: "I know nothing about the matter except that she was very unhappy and excited, and my friend and I followed her as fast as we could, fearing she might commit some desperate deed." "Some desperate deed, ha, ha! yes, and so she did!" shrieked the old crone, in horrid glee. "She met the old man she feared and hated, and she murdered him--murdered him so that he should not betray her secret!" "Woman, woman! how dare you utter such a fiendish lie!" exclaimed the soldier angrily. He sprang forward as though to strike her down, but she eluded him, and drew a glittering knife to defend herself. "Lay but a finger on old Meg, and you will be stretched out there by the miser's side," she menaced, and again laughing a horrible laugh, she continued: "She murdered him, I say it again, and before twenty-four hours go over her head she shall lie in prison for her crime! Ah! she thinks her secret safe now, but barely an hour ago he told me she had been his wife in secret for a year, and that he was going there to claim her to-night!" * * * * * Stiff and stark in his last long sleep, Miser Farnham lay in his coffin awaiting burial--this was the end of his plotting and planning--his scheming and sinning. The inquest was over, and Meg Dineheart, as chief witness, had hounded the hapless girl she hated to a terrible fate. Circumstantial evidence had pointed so strongly to Nita as the slayer of the miser, that she had been consigned to prison to await trial for murder. There were few who could believe in the young girl's innocence, for the evidence against her was so overwhelmingly strong, and the motive for the murder so plain. And there were not lacking witnesses to prove that the girl had been desperate with despair and misery. The Courtneys were the first to turn against her, and as witnesses they did their worst. They could tell the story from the beginning of Nita's falling in love with another man, and her fear and hatred of the miser; they could tell of the elopement, of the return, and of Nita's desperate despair and frantic grief when she learned that the miser had survived the dreadful railway accident. They could dwell with telling effect on her wickedness in encouraging Dorian's love when she was another man's wife, they could dilate on the attempted suicide in London. All their stifled hatred of the girl who had benefited them could be aired now, and without one word of pity for her sorrows, they became old Meg's able allies in hounding her to her doom. Even Dorian and Captain Van Hise had been compelled to give damning evidence against Nita. They had found her kneeling and then trying to escape from the murdered man's side, her dress and her hands all wet with the blood.