Frank Hunter came among the very first and went back and forth from the sitting room to the bedroom, with an uneasy air of searching for something and yet striving to conceal the fact. Trafford watched him with a curious expression on his face, as if he enjoyed the man’s awkwardness and embarrassment. When Charles Matthewson arrived on the latest train and went directly to the Hunter house, Trafford was instantly informed and at once made up his mind to his line of action. McManus’s suicide was confession, and the possession of the papers was no longer necessary to conviction. Trafford determined to have them off his hands at the earliest possible moment, and with Matthewson in town, that promised to be before daylight. At the first opportunity he stole out, recovered possession of the box, and hid it in a less exposed place. About midnight, matters had so quieted down that he was able to respond to Mrs. Parlin’s message begging him to come to her and, if possible, remain in the house the balance of the night. He took with him the box, containing what he now regarded as his fortune and his reward for work done in discovering the murderer. Mrs. Parlin was eager to hear the story, and it was some time after midnight before she left him and he was at liberty to follow his purpose. His judgment dictated waiting until morning, which would be a matter of but a few hours, but the box and its papers had become a growing burden, leaving him but one thought and that to be rid of them. From the library window he could see that a light still burned in the Hunter house. He was resolved to complete the matter before he slept. Leaving the house cautiously, with the box under his arm, he hurried down the hill, at the foot of which lay the heavy shadows of the great Lombardy poplars. It seemed to him that he had never seen the shadows so black as they were to-night. As he entered the blackness, he quickened his pace almost to a run, and was almost in the light again when there came what seemed to him a flash of flame, then deeper darkness and oblivion. How long he lay on the walk under the poplars he did not know, excepting that his first sensation of returning consciousness was of the soft white light that comes before the sun steals up from behind the earth. The next was of a heaviness of the head and a numbness that was giving way to pain. He put up his hand feebly, and brought it down again wet with blood.