it can be laid to rest.”

And then, speaking with deep feeling, he exclaimed:

“Put yourselves in my place! Think what you would feel”—he looked from one to the other of the men who 92were confronting him—“if you were situated as I am situated. Would you not do everything in your power to put an end, once for all, to so horrible, so hideous a suspicion?”

92

“I wonder if I should,” said Mr. Braithwaite musingly. “Honestly, I don’t feel at all sure!”

He waited a moment.

“You formally ask that an exhumation order be issued, Mr. Garlett?”

“Yes, I do most earnestly ask that it may be issued. Nay, more, I regard it as my right.”

Both men shook hands with him, yet after the last echoes of their visitor’s footsteps had died away, they simultaneously exclaimed the one to the other: “I don’t know what to think—do you?”

“It isn’t often that you and I are so absolutely of one mind, Wilson, eh?” Mr. Braithwaite spoke jokingly, but there was an undercurrent of deep questioning in his voice. “If Garlett is guilty, then he’s the most cunning devil of the many cunning devils you and I have come across! But of one thing we may be quite sure—nothing of a surprising nature will be found in the poor woman’s body. If our friend did kill her, he has completely covered up his tracks!”

“I am inclined to believe,” said the other hesitatingly, “that Garlett is an absolutely innocent man.”

“In that case, God help the poor devil! He doesn’t know what he’s letting himself in for,” observed Braithwaite. “He’ll be a marked man all his life. Think of what a country town can be like for malice and all uncharitableness.”

“I wonder,” said the Scotsman, “if it’s the girl who’s driven him to this extreme course? What if she’s made her marriage conditional on all this mess being cleared up? She may have done that—if she’s a fool. It’s plain he’s entirely devoted to her.”

“Kentworthy says they were talked about long before his first wife’s death.”

“I didn’t forget that fact just now,” said Dr. Wilson smiling. “When he first spoke of the girl I said to myself: ‘She’s the cause of all the mischief. Keep clear of the sex, 

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