"Had you seen him recently?"

"I seen him Thanksgiving day along about four o'clock crossing the
Square."

"How was he dressed, did you notice?"

"He was dressed like the man in the alley,--he had on a black derby hat
and a dark brown overcoat."

"That's all," said Moxlow quietly.

The coroner and the jury drew aside and began a whispered consultation.
In the vitiated atmosphere of that overcrowded room, heavy as it was
with the stifling heat and palpably dense with the escaping smoke from
the cracked wood-stove, men coughed nervously with every breath they
drew, but their sense of physical discomfort was unheeded in their tense
interest in the developments of the last few moments. The jury's
deliberation was brief and then the coroner announced its verdict.

North heard the doctor's halting words without at once grasping their
meaning. A long moment of silence followed, and then a man coughed, and
then another, and another; this seemed to break the spell, for suddenly
the room buzzed with eager whisperings.

North's first definite emotion was one of intense astonishment. Were
they mad? But the faces turned toward him expressed nothing beyond
curiosity. His glance shifted to the official group by the table. These
good-natured commonplace men who, whether they liked him or not, had
invariably had a pleasant word for him, instantly took on an air of grim