CHAPTER VI

The Murder

The rising sun was invisible from the little station hidden in the gloom of the hill, but away out on the river its rays reached the water and marked out sharply the shadow of the high ground.

Further down the stream the rugged outlines of the Mansion were cut in silhouette on the surface of the river, which was, as yet, smooth as a mill-pond, but which soon would be moved by those thousands of ripples advancing from the opposite shore.

As the sun shot his beams clearer and sharper, the mist of the distance unfolded and the rays struck the ragged granite cliffs of the shore, and revealed them yellow and gray in the bluish haze of the morn.

Away up, miles beyond, the river broadened and the mountains of both sides rose abruptly and ruggedly, apparently from the water's edge, causing the effect of a wide, placid lake.

[Pg 57]

[Pg 57]

All was quiet, lonely and dark on this side of the shore under the hill, but beyond, where the rays of the sun had reached, was beginning life and activity.

A schooner, becalmed until now, began to move with the breeze that greeted the waking of day.

The train had but just left the little station, and again had two strangers alighted. One, the older, trudged up the hill covered with a great-coat, and with hands in his pockets. He walked rather rapidly, looking sharply around once or twice. As he neared the top, where the country rolls off into the plain, he turned to admire the spectacle of the breaking day. His glance followed the road, and he saw below the second figure walking along in a hurry, as though to make up for lost time.

He smiled and said to himself: "That fellow Martin is a persistent youngster, anyway."

A few yards more brought him to the crest of the hill; then he suddenly stopped, for before him was unfolded a stretch of rolling ground, well filled with trees in autumnal foliage, and beyond, the spires and the sky-line of a sleeping town. To his right he beheld a large wooded tract extending for at least a [Pg 58]mile down the river, and in the dim distance the shaded outlines of an old mansion. Over all was the glorious yellow sun. The new fresh rays caught the leaves on the trees and on the ground, and kissed away the frost of the October morning. The 

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