The colonel was silent.

“Rotten poor sport!” repeated Gilmore.

“Who’ll come in for his property?” asked Watt Harbison.

“Oh, some one will claim that,” said Gilmore.  “They were saying down at the store, that once, years ago, a brother of his turned up, here, but McBride got rid of him.”

“Suppose we have a look around before we settle ourselves for the night,” suggested Watt Harbison.

“Will you join us, Colonel?” asked the gambler.

But the colonel shook his head.  Gilmore took up one of the lamps as he spoke and opened a door that led into what had evidently once been a dining-room, but it was now only partly furnished; back of this was a kitchen, and beyond the kitchen a woodshed.  Returning to the front of the house, they mounted to the floor above.  Here had been the old merchant’s bedroom; adjoining it were two smaller rooms, one of which had been used as a place of storage for trunks and boxes and broken bits of furniture; the other room was empty.

“We may as well go back down-stairs,” said the gambler, halting, lamp in hand, in the center of the empty room.

Harbison nodded, and leading the way to the floor below, they rejoined the colonel in the sitting-room, where they made themselves as comfortable as possible.

The colonel and his nephew talked in subdued tones, principally of the murdered man; they had no desire to exclude their companion from the conversation, but Gilmore displayed no interest in what was said.  He sat at the colonel’s elbow, preoccupied and thoughtful, smoking cigar after cigar.  Presently the colonel and his nephew lapsed into silence.  Their silence seemed to rouse Gilmore to what was passing about him.  He glanced at the elder Harbison.

“You look tired, Colonel,” he said.  “Why don’t you stretch out on that lounge yonder and take a nap?”

“I think I shall, Andy, if you and Watt don’t mind.”  And the colonel quitted his chair.

“Better put your coat over you,” advised the gambler.

He watched the colonel as he made himself comfortable on the lounge, then he lighted a fresh cigar, tilted his chair against the wall and with head thrown back studied the ceiling.  Watt Harbison made one or two tentative attempts at conversation, to which Gilmore briefly responded, then the young fellow also became thoughtful.  He fell to watching the gambler’s strong profile which the lamp silhouetted against the opposite wall; then drowsiness completely overcame him and he slept in his chair with his head fallen forward on his breast.

Gilmore, alert and sleepless, smoked on; he was thinking of Evelyn Langham.  After his interview with her husband that afternoon he had gone to his own apartment.  His bedroom adjoined North’s parlor and through the flimsy lath and plaster partition he had distinctly heard a woman’s voice.  The sound of that voice and the suspicion it instantly begot added to his furious hatred of North, for he had long suspected that something more than friendship existed between Marshall Langham’s wife and Marshall Langham’s friend.