act of violence? Yes; but in this case he had been guiltless. She
could not but concede this even while yielding to extreme
revulsion as she laid his picture aside.

The next slip she took up contained an eulogy of the victim.

"The sudden death of Algernon Etheridge has been in more than one
sense a great shock to the community. Though a man of passive
rather than active qualities, his scholarly figure, long, lean and
bowed, has been seen too often in our streets not to be missed,
when thus suddenly withdrawn. His method of living; the rigid
habits of an almost ascetic life; such an hour for this thing,
such an hour for that--his smile, which made you soon forget his
irascibility and pride of learning; made up a character unique in
our town and one that we can ill afford to spare. The closed doors
of the little cottage, so associated with his name that it will be
hard to imagine it occupied by any one else, possess a pathos of
their own which is felt by young and old alike. The gate that
never would latch, the garden, where at a stated hour in the
morning his bowed figure would always be seen hoeing or weeding or
raking, the windows without curtains showing the stacks of books
within, are eloquent of a presence gone, which can never be
duplicated. Alone on its desolate corner, it seems to mourn the
child, the boy, the man who gave it life, and made it, in its
simplicity, more noted and more frequently pointed at than any
other house in town.

"Why he should have become the target of Fate is one of the
mysteries of life. His watch, which aside from his books was his
most valuable possession, was the gift of Judge Ostrander. That it