CHAPTER V.
_The Hearing before the Coroner._--_Romantic Rumors and Vague Suspicions._--_An Unexpected Telegram._--_Bucholz Suspected._ The next day the sun shone gloriously over a beautiful winter's day, and as its bright rays lighted up the ice-laden trees in the little wood, causing their branches to shimmer with the brilliant hues of a rainbow's magnificence, no one would have imagined that in the gloom of the night before, a human cry for help had gone up through the quiet air or that a human life had been beaten out under their glittering branches.
The night had been drearily spent in the home which Henry Schulte had occupied, and the body of the murdered man had been guarded by officers of the law, designated by the coroner who designed holding the customary inquest upon the morrow.
To the inmates of the house the hours had stretched their weary lengths along, and sleep came tardily to bring relief to their overwrought minds.

Bucholz, nervous and uneasy, had, without undressing, thrown himself upon the bed with Sammy Waring, and during his broken slumbers had frequently started nervously and uttered moaning exclamations of pain or fear, and in the morning arose feverish and unrefreshed.
The two girls, who had wept profusely during the night, and before whose minds there flitted unpleasant anticipations of a public examination, in which they would no doubt play prominent parts, and from which they involuntarily shrank, made their appearance at the table heavy-eyed and sorrowful.
As the morning advanced, hundreds of the villagers, prompted by idle curiosity and that inherent love of excitement which characterizes all communities, visited the scene of the murder, and as they gazed vacantly around, or pointed out the place where the body had been found, many and varied opinions were expressed as to the manner in which the deed was committed, and of the individuals who were concerned in the perpetration of the crime.
A rumor, vague at first, but assuming systematic proportions as the various points of information were elucidated, passed through the crowd, and was eagerly accepted as the solution of the seeming mystery.
It appeared that several loungers around the depot at Stamford, a town about eight miles distant, on the night previous had observed two conspicuous-looking foreigners, who had reached the depot at about ten o'clock.

They seemed to be exhausted and out of breath, as though they had been running a long distance, and in broken English, scarcely intelligible, had inquired (in an apparently excited manner), when the next train was to leave for New York.

There were several cabmen and hangers-on who usually make a railroad depot their headquarters about, and by them the two men were informed that there were no more trains running to New York that night.

This information seemed to occasion them considerable annoyance and disappointment; they walked up and down the platform talking and gesticulating excitedly, and separating ever and anon, when they imagined themselves noticed by those who happened to be at the station.
Soon after this an eastern-bound train reached the depot, and these same individuals, instead of going to New York, took passage on this train.