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 hole,—and I was lucky in the choice. I knew that if I could puncture one of the other alibis, you would be more inclined to help me test the Major's."

"But if, as you say, you knew from the first that the Major was guilty, why, in God's name, didn't you tell me, and save me this week of anxiety?"

"Don't be ingenuous, old man," returned Vance. "If I had accused the Major at the beginning, you'd have had me arrested for scandalum magnatum and criminal libel. It was only by deceivin' you every minute about the Major's guilt, and drawing a whole school of red herrings across the trail, that I was able to get you to accept the fact even to-day. And yet, not once did I actu'lly lie to you. I was constantly throwing out suggestions, and pointing to significant facts, in the hope that you'd see the light for yourself; but you ignored all my intimations, or else misinterpreted them, with the most irritatin' perversity."

Markham was silent a moment.

"I see what you mean. But why did you keep setting up these straw men and then knocking them over?"

"You were bound, body and soul, to circumst'ntial evidence," Vance pointed out. "It was only by letting you see that it led you nowhere that I was able to foist the Major on you. There was no evidence against him,—he naturally saw to that. No one even regarded him as a possibility: fratricide has been held as inconceivable—a lusus naturæ—since the days of Cain. Even with all my finessing you fought every inch of the way, objectin' to this and that, and doing everything imag'nable to thwart my