“I think that is he coming now,” said the old detective quietly, as the sound of some one running up the path was borne to their strained senses.

“Look here!” snarled the man with the broken wrist, as he clasped it with his other hand, “aren’t you—­” he started back as a last flicker of the waning light fell across the colonel’s face.  “Who in the name of all the devils in hades are you?” he cried.  “What right have you—­”

“The right of the law,” was the quiet answer.  The colonel’s hand slipped into his pocket, where something metallic clicked.  “The right of the law.  Langford Larch, I arrest you for the murder of Mrs. Amelia Darcy!”

It was so still for a moment that the rustle of a bird’s wings in the tree overhead sounded like the rushing of wind.  Colonel Ashley, drawing something from his pocket, took a step nearer the maimed man.  As he did so Larch laughed wildly.

“Ah, so that’s the game, is it?” he cried.  “You have betrayed me, Cynthia, you she-devil!  You put up this little game with your lover Grafton, did you?  Well you—­”

“Langford, I never—!”

“Bah!  Well, I’ll fool you all!  Arrest me for murdering the old woman, will you?  Like hell you will!”

He stepped back a pace, Colonel Ashley following.

“Keep back!” cried Larch.  “If you touch me—!  I’m not afraid of you.  Yes, I did kill her!  I didn’t mean to, but I did.  The game’s up!  I can see that.  But you’ll never get me to the chair.  I’ll fool you all!  I’m not afraid to die!”

Before the colonel or Aaron Grafton, who just then burst through the bushes fringing the path, could make a move to prevent him, Langford Larch, with a cry like that of a stricken beast, threw himself over the edge of the rocky precipice, and his body went crashing down a hundred feet into the swirling waters below.

CHAPTER XXII

HIS LAST CASE

Slowly the bruised and cut lips moved.  Faintly came from the maimed throat a hoarse whisper.

“I—­did—­it!  I know this is the end.  I’ll confess everything!”

Before his death, which followed soon after he had been taken from the swirling waters, Langford Larch made a complete confession, telling how he had killed Mrs. Darcy.

Swiftly went the news to the jail, and later to the courthouse, whence, after a conference between the grave judge and a somewhat disappointed, though perhaps gladly so, prosecutor of the pleas, James Darcy walked forth a free man, honorably discharged from the custody of the court, the indictment against him for murder quashed.

Amy Mason was the first to greet her lover when he stepped away from the bench of the judge, before which he stood to hear himself cleared of the charge.

“Oh, Jimmie boy!  I’m so glad!” and her eyes beamed.

“And so am I, Amy.  If you knew what I have gone through—­”