But my task now became very difficult, for the moon was high and shone down upon the road so distinctly that I could not follow the person before me as closely as I wished without running the risk of being discovered by him.  I therefore trusted more to my ear than to my eye, and as long as I could hear his steps in front of me I was satisfied.  But presently, as we turned up this very hill, I ceased to hear these steps and so became confident that he had taken to the woods.  I was so sure of this that I did not hesitate to enter them myself, and, knowing the paths well, as I have every opportunity of doing, living, as we do, directly opposite this forest, I easily found my way to the little clearing that I have reason to think you gentlemen have since become acquainted with.  But though from the sounds I heard I was assured that the person I was following was not far in advance of me, I did not dare to enter this brilliantly illumined space, especially as there was every indication of this person having completed whatever task he had set for himself.  Indeed, I was sure that I heard his steps coming back.  So, for the second time, I crouched down in the darkest place I could find and let this mysterious person pass me.  When he had quite disappeared, I made my own retreat, for it was late, and I was afraid of being missed at the ball.  But later, or rather the next day, I recrossed the road and began a search for the money which I was confident had been left in the woods opposite, by the person I had been following.  I found it, and when the man here present who, though a mere fiddler, has presumed to take a leading part in this interview, came upon me with the bills in my hand, I was but burying deeper the ill-gotten gains I had come upon.”

“Ah, and so making them your own,” quoth Sweetwater, stung by the sarcasm in that word fiddler.

But with a suavity against which every attack fell powerless, she met his significant look with one fully as significant, and quietly said: 

“If I had wanted the money for myself I would not have risked leaving it where the murderer could find it by digging up a few handfuls of mould and a bunch of sodden leaves.  No, I had another motive for my action, a motive with which few, if any, of you will be willing to credit me.  I wished to save the murderer, whom I had some reason, as you see, for thinking I knew, from the consequences of his own action.”

Mr. Courtney, Dr. Talbot, and even Mr. Sutherland, who naturally believed she referred to Zabel, and who, one and all, had a lingering tenderness for this unfortunate old man, which not even this seeming act of madness on his part could quite destroy, felt a species of reaction at this, and surveyed the singular being before them with, perhaps, the slightest shade of relenting in their severity.  Sweetwater alone betrayed restlessness, Knapp showed no feeling at all, while Frederick stood like one petrified, and moved neither hand nor foot.