Henry walked up and down the room when Mrs. Witherspoon and Ellen were gone.  With a mother’s love, that gentle woman had found a mother’s place in his heart.  He looked at the rocking-chair.  Suddenly he seized hold of the mantelpiece to steady himself.  He had caught himself seriously wondering if she had rocked him years ago.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE INVESTMENT.

It seemed to Henry that he had just dozed off to sleep when he was startled by a loud knock at the door.

“Henry, Henry!” It was Witherspoon’s voice.

“Yes.”

“Get up, quick!  Old man Colton is murdered.”

When he went down-stairs he found the household in confusion.  Every one on the place had been aroused.  The servants were whispering in the hall.  Witherspoon was waiting for him.

“A messenger has just brought the news.  Come, we must go over there.  The carriage is waiting.”

It was two o’clock.  A fierce and cutting wind swept across the lake—­the icy breath of a dying year.  Not a word was spoken as the carriage sped along.  At the door of Colton’s home Witherspoon and Henry were confronted by a policeman.

“My orders are to let no one in,” said the officer.

“I am George Witherspoon.”

The policeman stepped aside.  Brooks met them in the hall.  He said nothing, but took Witherspoon’s hand.  The place was thronged with police officers and reporters.

Adjoining Colton’s sleeping-apartment, on the second floor, was a small room with a window looking out on the back yard, and with one door opening from the hall.  In this room, let partly into the wall, was an iron safe in which the old man kept “the little money” that he had decided to invest in real estate.  The window was protected by upright iron bars.  At night, a gas-jet, turned low, threw dismal shadows about the room, and it was the old man’s habit to light the gas at bed-time and to turn it off the first thing at morning.  He had lighted the gas shortly after returning from Witherspoon’s house and had gone to bed, and it must have been about one o’clock when the household was startled by the report of a pistol.  Brooks and his wife, whose room was on the same floor, ran into the old man’s room.  The place was dark, but a bright light burned in the vault-room.  Into this room they ran, and there, lying on the floor, with money scattered about him, was the old man, bloody and dead, with a bullet-hole in his breast.  But where was Mrs. Colton?  They hastened back to her room and struck a light.  The old woman lay across the bed, unable to move—­paralyzed.

The first discovery made by the police was that the iron bars at the window, four in number, had been sawed in two; and then followed another discovery of a more singular nature.  In the window, caught by the sudden fall of the sash, was a black frock coat.  In one of the tail pockets was a briar-root pipe.  The sash had fallen while the murderer was getting out, and, pulled against the sash, the pipe held the garment fast.  One sleeve was torn nearly off.  In a side pocket was found a letter addressed to Dave Kittymunks, general delivery, Chicago, and post-marked Milwaukee.  Under the window a ladder was found.