the crime, that unless I wanted you to understand _all_ my reasons for
uncertainty, I would not speak of him even here in connection with it.

"My next reason seems almost as shadowy as this; but it has considerable
weight with me, nevertheless. It is, that I believe the man who is in
prison for the murder has neither strength of body nor of nerve to have
committed it."

He stopped as Mrs. Costello uttered a broken exclamation of surprise.

"You would not know him," Mr. Strafford said gently, answering her look.
"He has changed so much since I saw him not many weeks ago, that even I
scarcely did so. They tell me that he has had an attack of fever while
he was in the bush, and that he was but half recovered from it when he
came back with the rest of the gang, a week ago."

"And since then," Mrs. Costello asked, "where has he been?"

"Not where he was likely to regain much strength. He and the other
Indians have been living in one of the shanties close to the mill. It is
extremely swampy and unhealthy there, and besides that, he seems to have
been almost without food, living upon whisky."

Lucia shuddered still; but the wretched picture softened her,
nevertheless. A feeling of compassion for the first time stole into her
heart for the miserable creature who was her father.

"But that day," she said; "do you know anything of that day?"

"He seems to have been doing nothing--indeed I believe he had been