“Why, why did he hide it!” Mr. Slocum persisted.

“I do not see that he really hid it, papa.  He shut the note in a book lying openly on the table,—­a dictionary, to which any one in the household was likely to go.  You think Mr. Taggett a person of great acuteness.”

“He is a very intelligent person, Margaret.”

“He appears to me very short-sighted.  If Richard were the dreadful man Mr. Taggett supposes, that paper would have been burnt, and not left for the first comer to pick up.  I scorn myself for stooping to the suggestion!”

“There is something in the idea,” said Mr. Slocum slowly.  “But why did Richard never mention the note,—­to you, or to me, or to anybody?”

“He had a sufficient reason, you may be sure.  Oh, papa, how ready you are to believe evil of him!”

“I am not, God knows!”

“How you cling to this story of the letter!  Suppose it turns out to be some old letter, written two or three years ago?  You could never look Richard in the face again.”

“Unfortunately, Shackford dated it.  It is useless for us to blindfold ourselves, Margaret.  Richard has managed in some way to get himself into a very perilous situation, and we cannot help him by shutting our eyes.  You misconceive me if you imagine I think him capable of coolly plotting his cousin’s death; but it is not outside the limits of the possible that what has happened a thousand times may have happened once more.  Men less impulsive than Richard”—­

“I will not listen to it!” interrupted Margaret, drawing herself up.  “When Richard returns he will explain the matter to you,—­not to me.  If I required a word of denial from him, I should care very little whether he was innocent or not.”

Mr. Slocum threw a terrified glance at his daughter.  Her lofty faith sent a chill to his heart.  What would be the result of a fall from such a height?  He almost wished Margaret had something less of that ancestral confidence and obstinacy the lack of which in his own composition he had so often deplored.

“We are not to speak of this to Richard,” he said, after a protracted pause; “at least not until Mr. Taggett considers it best.  I have pledged myself to something like that.”

“Has Richard been informed of Mr. Taggett’s singular proceeding?” asked Margaret, freezingly.

“Not yet; nothing is to be done until Mr. Taggett returns from New York, and then Richard will at once have an opportunity of clearing himself.”

“It would have spared us all much pain and misunderstanding if he had been sent for in the first instance.  Did he know that this person was here in the yard?”

“The plan was talked over before Richard left; the details were arranged afterwards.  He heartily approved of the plan.”

A leisurely and not altogether saint-like smile crept into the corners of Margaret’s mouth.