Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/49

 "Yes," said Miss Higgins, with a sigh; "there is so much in the accident of birth—it should broaden our sympathies." Miss Higgins adjusted her spectacles with precision on her sharp, literary nose, and turned to the lady on her right. "But I have mentioned this only in passing. I think, Mrs. Ambrose, you proposed a paper on Sophocles by Miss Farrington. Does any member of the committee desire to discuss the proposal?"

As the hours went by that morning, the tension and suspense in the little town rose steadily. Doctor Merton had been murdered; Varge had confessed to the deed—that was all anybody seemed to know.

But in the district attorney's office in the county courthouse a more intimate scene in connection with the crime had been taking place. For an hour Sheriff Marston had been closeted with the prosecuting officer. And now he was pacing up and down the room, stopping every once in a while to lay a fat forefinger in emphasis on the edge of the other's desk; while Lee, the district attorney, bent forward a little in his chair, tapped thoughtfully with a paper cutter on the desk-pad as he listened.

"That's the whole story summed up the way he told it to me," said Marston at last. "I didn't believe him last night, but there was nothing to do except lock him up and notify the coroner. I went up to the house and spent the rest of the night looking things over, and I'll admit they bore out what he said—the way he had run from the house at first to make his escape, I could tell that by the stride in the snow; then the bit trampled down in the woods; and then his tracks back across the