“I see my boy, Billy, a-tinkerin’ with it,” said the fisherman. “Like as not he’s been a-usin’ of it to whittle on. That boy breaks more knives’n his neck’s wuth. He’s goin’ on nine, now, and he’s had six jackknives in as many months.”
Mr. Burton stood, holding the chain in his hand, and looking up and down the river. His face glowed with a light which shone through from some inward fire. I, who had begun to watch his varying expressions with keen interest, saw that he was again becoming excited; but not in the same way as on that first evening of our meeting, when he grew so leonine.
He looked at the water and the sky, the fair shores and the dull dock, as if these mute witnesses were telling to him a tale which he read like a printed book. A few moments he stood thus in silence, his countenance illuminated by that wonderful intelligence. Then, saying that his researches were through with in this part of the village, we returned, almost in silence, to the office; for when this man was pondering the enigmas whose solution he was so certain to announce, sooner or later, he grew absorbed and taciturn.
Mr. Argyll made us go home with him to dinner. I knew that I should not see Eleanor; yet, even to be under the same roof with her, made me tremble. Mary, who was constantly in attendance upon her sister, would not appear at the table. She came down, for a moment, to greet me, and to thank me for my poor efforts. The dear child had changed some, like the rest of us. She could not look like anything but the rosebud which she was—a fresh and pure young creature of sixteen summers—a rosebud drenched in dew—a little pale, with a quiver in her smile, and bright tears beading her eyelashes, ready, at any moment, to drop. It was touching to see one naturally so joyous, subdued by the shadow which had fallen over the house. Neither of us could say much; our lips trembled when we spoke her name; so, after a moment’s holding my hand, while the tears began to flow fast, Mary unclasped my fingers, and went upstairs. I saw Mr. Burton hide those blue-gray eyes of his in his handkerchief; my respect for him deepened as I felt that those eyes, sharp and penetrating as they were, were not too cold to warm with a sudden mist at the vision he had beheld.
“Ah!” murmured I to myself, “if he could see Eleanor!”
When dinner was over, Mr. Argyll went up to see his children, giving me permission to show the house and grounds to the detective. James went on the portico to smoke a cigar. Mr. Burton sat a short time in the library, taking an impression of it on his mind, examined the lock of the desk, and noticed the arrangement of the one window, which was a large bay-window opening to the floor and projecting over the flower-garden which lay behind the house and bordered the lawn to the right. It was about three feet to the ground, and although quite accessible, as a mode of entrance, to anyone compelled to that resource, the window was not ordinarily used as a mode of ingress or egress. I had sometimes chased Mary, when she was not so old as now, and sent her flying through the open casement into the mignonette and violets beneath, and I after; but since we had both grown more sedate, such pranks were rare.
We then went out upon the lawn. I took my companion to the tree beneath which I had stood, when that dark figure had approached, and passed me, to crouch beneath the window from which the death-candles shone. From this spot, the bay-window was not visible, that being at the back of the house and this on the side. Mr. Burton looked carefully about him, walking all over the lawn, going up under the parlor windows, and thence pursuing his way into the garden and around to the bay-window. It was quite natural to search closely in this precinct for some mark or footsteps, some crushed flowers, or broken branches, or scratches upon the wall, left by the thief, if he or she had made his or her entrance at this spot. Going over the ground thus, inch by inch, I observed a bit of white lawn, soiled and weather-beaten, lying under a rosebush a few feet from the window. I picked it up. It was a woman’s handkerchief, of fine lawn, embroidered along the edge with a delicate running vine, and a spray of flowers at the corner.
“One of the young ladies has dropped it, some time ago,” I said, “or it has blown across from the kitchen grass-plot, where the linen is put out to dry.”
Then I examined the discolored article more closely, and, involved in the graceful twinings of the spray of flowers, I saw worked the initials—“L. S.”
“Leesy Sullivan,” said my companion, taking it from my hand.
“It seems too dainty an article for her ownership,” I said, at last, for, at first, I had been quite stupefied.
“A woman’s vanity will compass many things beyond her means. This thing she has embroidered with her own needle—you remember, she is a proficient in the art.”
“Yes, I remember. She may have lost it Sunday night, during that visit which I observed; and the wind has blown it over into this spot.”
“You forget that there has been no rain since that night. This handkerchief has been beaten into the grass and earth by a violent rain. A thorn upon this bush has pulled
