agony. Aside from this, no article of apparel or furniture in the room seemed in the slightest degree disarranged. Life had evidently fled some hours ago. The corpse of the unhappy man was stiff and cold. A razor lay on the floor, at the bedside, as though it had fallen out of his hands.'

'And no sign of outside violence?' I asked.

'Not the least. Clearly a case of suicide; and I am not going to let our Company suffer for such a rascally proceeding,' said the irate Willard, who evidently regarded the deceased Colonel as one who had designs upon the coffers of the Volcano Life-Insurance Company.

'Of course the coroner has the matter in hand?'

'Yes.'

'Well, telegraph immediately to Boston,' said I, after momentary consideration. In two hours I will meet you at Colonel T.'s rooms.'

When I arrived upon the scene of the tragedy, Dr. Davis, the coroner, had already impannelled a jury, and examined the other residents of the house. My head full of the strange colloquy to which I had been an unwilling listener the previous evening, and mystified by this far more than any of the others, I listened eagerly to the evidence.

The ground-floor of the house was occupied as a dry-goods store. Its owner slept elsewhere. The floor above the Colonel's apartments was rented by an invalid with her servant. The attic was occupied by the negro woman who attended the Colonel's rooms, and by a negro laundress.

The lock of the outer door of the Colonel's apartments had not been tampered with. The key was found under the pillow, in the bed. The window, as before mentioned, was found open; but a close scrutiny of the wall, outside and in, and of the window-sill, revealed no marks of unlawful entrance.

On the floor lay the mystery! From the bed-side, where a little pool of blood had gathered on the floor, to the door, and one step beyond, on the outside of the room, there were the tracks of a human foot! tracked in blood! Only once was the impression of the whole foot given; the other tracks were as of one walking on his toes. All were of a bare foot.

The dead man's feet were bare; but they were bloodless. Moreover, on comparing, his foot was not quite so large as that which had made the track. So said one of the persons who measured. But the doctor, who examined all very carefully, was of opinion that the Colonel's bare and living foot would have left just such a track.

So far, those present were about equally divided between the two suppositions: murder and suicide.

'Why should he be murdered? He was not robbed,' said one jury-man to another.

'Why should he commit suicide; and why go out of the door after he had cut his throat; and how get back?' was asked in answer.

Several persons were now examined. A night-watchman deposed to seeing a light in the Colonel's room till about ten o'clock the previous night.

The lady who resided above, had heard, between two and three o'clock in the morning, a noise as of one hastily throwing open a door, in the Colonel's

room.

The woman-servant of the invalid lady had seen the Colonel going up-stairs to his room about nine the previous evening. She noticed no change from his usual appearance, but thought he walked slower than in general.

The laundress, being interrogated, stated that she was awakened about three o'clock, by a noise as of a door or window being opened. That, having to go early to work, she presently arose, dressed, and sallied out into the street. That she found the street-door simply latched not locked-though the key hung up upon its usual hook upon the back of the door. Finally, that as she emerged into the street, she saw a man stooping down, on the other side of the street. Hearing her step, he got up hurriedly, but slowly walked away. Owing to the darkness, she could not distinguish his features; but he was short, stout, and dressed loosely, somewhat like a sailor.

Just at this stage of the proceedings, a carriage stopped before the house. 'Here is Mrs. T.,' said Doctor Davis.

She had been sent for. As she was ushered into the sitting-room, the Doctor advanced to meet her; the rest of us remained in the adjoining room. I looked through the door-crack, and beheld a slender form, a face showing traces of suffering, but also traces of a beauty now in its decline.

After some words of respectful condolence upon the sad occasion which drew her hither, the coroner proceeded to ask her some questions as to the deceased.

'How long is it, Madam, since you last saw your husband?'

Her tears fell fast, and a heavy sob interrupted her as she essayed to an- at last :

swer

'I have not spoken to him for nearly four years,' said she in a voice still broken with emotion.

'Would you like to see him?'

She was led into the next room, and there left alone with the corpse. She sank upon her knees at the bed-side, yet without touching the corpse, and wept silently, her whole body heaving convulsively with the violence of her grief. When she returned, the coroner again interrogated her. 'Was your husband given to fits of melancholy, Madam ?' 'No, Sir.'

'Were his circumstances embarrassed?'

'So far as I know, they were not, Sir.'

'Did he ever speak of committing suicide, in your hearing?'

She buried her face in her hands, and trembled in silent agony, for a while, ere she could answer, with much hesitation: 'He did, Sir; but only once.' 'I told you so,' whispered the suicidal juryman, to his murderous fellow. 'Will you explain the occasion of that, Madam?'

After consideration, the lady looked up, with a somewhat stern, composed face, and said calmly: 'No, Sir, I would rather not. It has nothing - -' and than stopped abruptly.

There was a little consultation among the lawyers and the coroner, and the ⚫ latter asked again :

'I am sorry to put the question, but it is necessary,

Madam: do you know

any circumstance which would elucidate the mystery of your husband's death?'

Again she covered her face with her hands, and wept and trembled in that dreadful agony of spirit which seemed to seize her, but when she could speak, answered with a tolerably clear voice, and certainly a truthful look: 'No, Sir, I know nothing.'

'We shall not need you more for the present, Madam,' said the coroner presently.

The lady retired, casting a last and seemingly almost despairing look of sorrow toward the corpse, and even making a step toward the bed, as though she would catch the hand of the deceased in hers. But she refrained.

The waitress was recalled, and asked if she missed any accustomed object about the room. She said no. The fire-place, which was protected by a tightfitting screen, was exposed. There was no mark of an extraordinary advent or exit in this direction. Finally, I related what had occurred to me the preceding evening. My statement, as may be readily conceived, excited the liveliest attention. But it had no real bearing upon the mystery of the Colonel's death. I could not even depose certainly that it was the Colonel I saw. And if it was he, the circumstance by no means cleared up the case. It rather complicated it. The more we heard the deeper the mystery became. The jury agreed to suspend their verdict; indeed, they were so divided between suicide and murder, and there were so many floating theories and suppositions, that a verdict was an impossibility. The coroner thought it a case of suicide. Willard, the agent, thought it a complicated case of conspiracy to defraud his company, and desired to have Mrs. T. arrested as a leader in the plot. The jurymen were wise, as all jurymen are. But whatever they guessed, they knew so little that, as I have said, they finally agreed to suspend the verdict and await the possible developments of the day. Meantime, the papers of the deceased were being looked over. Every thing was in apple-pie order, as a fruit-seller on the jury observed. But they shed no light upon the mystery. There was no will found; of silver, ready money and jewelry, there was absolutely scarce a trace. This was astonishing in one of the Colonel's habits and means. Willard remarked that it strengthened him in the belief that the man had committed suicide with felonious intents upon the Volcano; while a keen-scented juryman thought he smelled a robbery, perhaps a murder.

We were about to retire, when entered a gentleman who claimed to be a friend of the deceased, and whom I recognized immediately as a person with whom he sometimes played chess. Captain Snyder, so he gave his name, appeared astonished and grieved at the sudden death, but could give no information. He had just received a note from Mrs. T., asking him to attend on her part to the obsequies, etc., and now offered to take charge of any thing not in the hands of the authorities.

'By the way, Doctor,' he remarked to the coroner, as we were going out, 'I would like very much to have a remembrance of my deceased friend. If the effects are sold, I desire to purchase for myself a set of silver chess-men, with the help of which he and I have passed so many pleasant hours, and also,

I would like to have a St. George's sovereign, which my friend used to carry in his pocket as a pocket-piece.'

'You say there was a set of silver chess-men?'

'Yes; you will probably find them in this little table. You see the top is thrown over in this way '— performing the action board. But the chess-men are not here!'

'and you have then a chess

Nor were they to be found. Nor was the St. George's sovereign any where to be discovered.

Here was evidence of a robbery!

The Captain assured us that he had played at chess with his deceased friend on Tuesday morning, that is, two days preceding the night in which he died. This discovery gave a new turn to the affair. If robbed, why, then, there was either murder or a most strange coïncidence between an accident and a crime. At any rate, there was now something to be traced up, and a prospect of arriving, by the discovery of the lost property, at some clue to the singular complication. A description of the missing articles was at once made out and sent to the police, who were requested to make earnest search in pawnbrokers' shops and other localities for them. The room of the Colonel's waitress was searched, but ineffectually, and the honest negress shed tears at thought that she was suspected of having robbed a master who had always treated her with kindness.

The police gained no clue to the lost articles. It became highly probable that the thief had melted up the valuable silver chess set. As for the sovereign, it might circulate unsuspected, and might possibly have gone through many hands without being remarked. For in so considerable a sea-port, foreign coins excite but little attention; and the only peculiarity of this sovereign was one so far common that a dozen like it might be in circulation in the city at the same time. It was, namely, a coin of the last century, having upon one of its sides a device of St. George and the Dragon, whereas sovereigns of a later date bear a bust of the reigning sovereign instead. The old sovereigns are worth some cents more than the newer ones, and have consequently been nearly all called in or melted up. Yet are they not so scarce that the possession of one of these old coins could be called remarkable.

More than two weeks passed without a clue to the mystery; the matter was already dropped from the papers; and as neither Mrs. T. nor any one else had laid claim to the insurance, Willard was more than ever convinced that the deceased Colonel was a rascal, when one day a new development really promised, or half promised, a denouement. The wife of the chief of police, settling a grocery bill, received in change for a bill an English sovereign. On handing the change to her husband in the, evening, he at once perceived that this sovereign was of the identical coinage with that which had so mysteriously disappeared from the Colonel's pocket. He immediately made inquiries of the owner of the grocery-store, and succeeded in tracing the coin to the possession of a small dealer near the water-side. This man stated that he received it some days ago, perhaps ten, perhaps more, of a man whom he did not know, but who was dressed as a common seaman. He had purchased an article of clothing from the general assortment, had re

ceived his purchase and the required small change, and was gone - whither no one knew. The dealer described his person, but the description was little worth as a clue.

A few days thereafter, however, happening into this small dealer's shop, an individual was pointed out to the chief, quietly, as the one who had paid out the sovereign.

'You are sure?' asked he of the dealer.

'Yes, Sir, I remember him very well.'

The man was about going out. The official approached him, and placing his hand upon his shoulder, said: 'Where did you stow the silver chess-men and the money you stole at Colonel T.'s house?'

The man turned pale, trembled violently, and finally when he had partially recovered his self-possession, vehemently protested entire ignorance of that with which he was charged. He even denied all knowledge of the sovereign he was said to have paid out; but afterward admitted that part of the charge against him, alleging that in his fear at so unexpected an accusation he had been led to deny every thing, and that his embarrassment was the result only of his utter innocence of the evil with which he was charged. He gave himself out to be a ship's carpenter, out of employment; had been in the city but a few weeks, having travelled overland from New-Orleans, where he found it difficult to procure employment; had lived at eating-houses, and slept in different places while in the city, having no regular stopping-place; had no friends to vouch for his character, which he violently maintained to be irreproachable, and *begged with tears that he might be let go. Though the suspicions were slight, he was locked up; and it was determined to examine him thoroughly the next day. Pending which, I was curious enough to call and see him, in company with Willard, who wanted to talk to him. The prisoner's voice seemed strangely familiar to me, but I could not remember having ever seen him before. But being informed that I was a lawyer, he insisted upon my 'taking care of him to-morrow,' as he termed it, and begged this so piteously, that, not believing him to have any concern with the Colonel's death, I consented. He assured me of his innocence of the slightest wrong, and repeated the story told already to the Chief.

The examination came on. The lodging-house keeper where George Gordon (this was the name of the prisoner) had slept deposed that he saw him to his room at or about eleven o'clock on the night in question, and that he came down from his room to breakfast about seven the next morning. The prisoner maintained that he had not quitted the room in the intervening period. The testimony of the laundress pointed to the hour of two as that when the robbery most likely took place. The District-Attorney being called upon, was unable to prove even that the suspicious coin which had caused the prisoner's arrest, was the identical one owned by the Colonel. Strangely enough Captain S., the witness whose testimony was most necessary to identify this coin, was missing. When inquiry was made for him, it appeared that he had suddenly left town, for New-Orleans apparently, but even of this no reliable information could be obtained. When the District-Attorney mentioned the unaccountable