“Yes, he approved of the plan,” repeated Mr. Slocum.  “Perhaps he”—­Here Mr. Slocum checked himself, and left the sentence flying at loose ends.  Perhaps Richard had looked with favor upon a method of inquiry which was so likely to lead to no result.  But Mr. Slocum did not venture to finish the suggestion.  He had never seen Margaret so imperious and intractable; it was impossible to reason or to talk frankly with her.  He remained silent, sitting with one arm thrown dejectedly across the back of the chair.

Presently his abject attitude and expression began to touch Margaret; there was something that appealed to her in the thin gray hair fallowing over his forehead.  Her eyes softened as they rested upon him, and a pitying little tremor came to her under lip.

“Papa,” she said, stooping to his side, with a sudden rosy bloom in her cheeks, “I have all the proof I want that Richard knew nothing of this dreadful business.”

“You have proof!” exclaimed Mr. Slocum, starting from his seat.

“Yes.  The morning Richard went to New York”—­Margaret hesitated.

“Well!”

“He put his arm around me and kissed me.”

“Well!”

“Well?” repeated Margaret.  “Could Richard have done that,—­could he have so much as laid his hand upon me—­if—­if”—­

 Mr. Slocum sunk back in the chair with a kind of groan.

“Papa, you do not know him!”

“Oh, Margaret, I am afraid that that is not the kind of evidence to clear Richard in Mr. Taggett’s eyes.”

“Then Richard’s word must do it,” she said haughtily.  “He will be home to-night.”

“Yes, he is to return to-night,” said Mr. Slocum, looking away from her.

XXII

During the rest of the day the name of Richard Shackford was not mentioned again by either Margaret or her father.  It was a day of suspense to both, and long before night-fall Margaret’s impatience for Richard to come had resolved itself into a pain as keen as that with which Mr. Slocum contemplated the coming; for every hour augmented his dread of the events that would necessarily follow the reappearance of young Shackford in Stillwater.

On reaching his office, after the conversation with Margaret, Mr. Slocum found Lawyer Perkins waiting for him.  Lawyer Perkins, who was as yet in ignorance of the late developments, had brought information of his own.  The mutilated document which had so grimly clung to its secret was at last deciphered.  It proved to be a recently executed will, in which the greater part of Lemuel Shackford’s estate, real and personal, was left unconditionally to his cousin.

“That disposes of one of Mr. Taggett’s theories,” was Mr. Slocum’s unspoken reflection.  Certainly Richard had not destroyed the will; the old man himself had destroyed it, probably in some fit of pique.  Yet, after all, the vital question was in no way affected by this fact; the motive for the crime remained, and the fearful evidence against Richard still held.