“Those crimes were committed in a vast metropolis affording a thousand chances for escape, as well as offering a thousand temptations to the lawless.  But we are a limited community.  We have no professional murderers among us.  The deed which has stirred society to its utmost depths was plainly done by some wayfaring amateur.  Remorse has already arrived upon him, if the police haven’t.  For the time being he escapes; but he is bound to betray himself sooner or later.  If the right steps are taken,—­and I have myself the greatest confidence in Mr. Taggett,—­the guilty party can scarcely fail to be brought to the bar of justice, if he doesn’t bring himself there.”

“Indeed, indeed, I hope so,” repeated Mr. Pinkham.

“The investigation is being carried on very closely.”

“Too closely,” suggested the school-master.

“Oh dear, no,” murmured Mr. Craggie.  “The strictest secrecy is necessary in affairs of this delicate nature.  If Tom, Dick, and Harry were taken behind the scenes,” he added, with the air of one wishing to say too much, “the bottom would drop out of everything.”

Mr. Pinkham shrunk from commenting on a disaster like that, and relapsed into silence.  Mr. Craggie, with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, and his legs crossed in an easy, senatorial fashion, leaned back in the chair and smiled blandly.

“I don’t suppose there’s nothing new, boys!” exclaimed a fat, florid man, bustling in good-naturedly at the public entrance, and leaving a straight wet trail on the sanded floor from the threshold to the polished mahogany counter.  Mr. Wilson was a local humorist of the Falstaffian stripe, though not so much witty in himself as the cause of wit in others.

“No, Jimmy, there isn’t anything new,” responded Dexter.

“I suppose you didn’t hear that the ole man done somethin’ handsome for me in his last will and testyment.”

“No, Jemmy, I don’t think he has made any provision whatever for an almshouse.”

“Sorry to hear that, Dexter,” said Willson, absorbedly chasing a bit of lemon peel in his glass with the spoon handle, “for there isn’t room for us all up at the town-farm.  How’s your grandmother?  Finds it tol’rably comfortable?”

They are a primitive, candid people in their hours of unlaced social intercourse in Stillwater.  This delicate tu quoque was so far from wounding Dexter that he replied carelessly,—­

“Well, only so so.  The old woman complains of too much chicken-sallid, and hot-house grapes all the year round.”

“Mr. Shackford must have left a large property,” observed Mr. Ward, of the firm of Ward & Lock, glancing up from the columns of the Stillwater Gazette.  The remark was addressed to Lawyer Perkins, who had just joined the group in the reading-room.

“Fairly large,” replied that gentleman crisply.

“Any public bequests?”

“None to speak of.”