These tongs, set up against the side of the fireplace had been jarred down by the forcible shutting of the large front door, and no man other than myself was in the house, or had been in the house; only the two women.

But the time when this discovery would have brought comfort was passed.

Better a hundred times that a man--I had almost said any man--should have been with them here, than that they should be closeted together in a spot so secluded, with rancour and cause for complaint in one heart, and a biting, deadly flame in the other, which once reaching up must from its very nature leave behind it a corrosive impress.

I saw,-I felt,--but I did not desist from my investigations.

A stick or two still smouldered on the hearthstone.