He always came back to his thought of her, and that which had once been his greatest joy now only filled him with despair.

Why had he ever spoken of his love,--what if this grim farce in which he was a hapless actor blundered on to a tragic close! He would have made any sacrifice had it been possible for him to face the situation alone, but another life was bound up with him; he would drag her down in the ruin that had overtaken him, and when it was all past and forgotten, she would remember,--the horror of it would fill her days! On that night, as on many another, North retraced step by step the ugly path that wound its tortuous way from McBride's back office to the cell in which he--John North--faced the gallows.

But the oftener he trod this path the more maze-like it became, until now he was hopelessly lost in its intricacies; discouraged, dazed, confused, almost convinced that in some blank moment of lost identity it was his hand that had sent the old man on his long last journey.

As Evelyn Langham had questioned, so now did John North: "If not I, then who did murder Archibald McBride ?" In a vain search for the missing handy-man, General Herbert had opened his purse wider than North or even Evelyn realized.

There seemed three possibilities in the instance of Montgomery.