His eye, which had followed the direction of my finger, grew dark and troubled. "Then it was your hand--" he impetuously began. "Which disturbed these garments before you? Yes. And I shall make no apology for the action," I continued, "since it was done in the hope of proving false certain insinuations which had been made to me in your regard." "Insinuations?" he repeated. "Yes," I declared, in an agony between my longing to hear him vindicate himself and the desire to be true to the obligations I was under to Ada Reynolds. "Insinuations of the worst, the most terrible, character." Then, as I saw him fall back, stricken in something more than his pride, I hastened to inquire: "Have you an enemy in town, Mr. Pollard?" He composed himself with a start, looked at me fixedly, and replied in what struck me as a strange tone even for such an occasion as this: "Perhaps." "One who out of revenge," I proceeded, "might be induced to attach your name to suspicions calculated to rob you of honor, if not life?" "Perhaps," he again returned; but this time with a fierceness that almost made me recoil, though I knew it was directed against some one besides myself. "Then it may be," I said, "that you have but to speak to relieve my mind of the heaviest weight which has ever fallen upon it. These articles," I pursued, "have they, or have they not, any connection with the tragedy which makes the place in which we stand memorable?" "I cannot answer you, Miss Sterling." "Cannot answer me?" "Cannot answer you," he reiterated, turning haggard about the eyes and lips. "Then," I brokenly rejoined, "I had better leave this place; I do not see what more I have to do or say here." "O God!" he cried, detaining me with a gesture full of agony and doubt. "Do not leave me so; let me think. Let me weigh the situation and see where I stand, in your eyes at least. Tell me what my enemy has said!" he demanded, his face, his very form, flashing with a terrible rage that seemed to have as much indignation as fear in it. "Your enemy," I replied, in the steady voice of despair, "accuses you in so many words--of murder." I expected to see him recoil, burst forth into cursing or frenzied declamation, by which men betray their inward consternation and remorse; but he did none of these things. Instead of that he laughed; a hideous laugh that seemed to shake the rafters above us and echoed in and out of the caverned recesses beneath. "Accuses _me_?" he muttered; and it is not in language to express the scorn he infused into the words. Stunned, and scarcely knowing what to think, I gazed at him helplessly. He seemed to feel my glance, for, after a moment's contemplation of my face, his manner suddenly changed, and bowing with a grim politeness full of sarcasm, he asked: "And when did you see my enemy and hold this precious conversation in which _I_ was accused of murder?"