his stricken daughter.

And all the while he was begging her to save him from the consequences
of his crime, his brain was searching for the means to dispose
of the body of Edward Crown and to provide an explanation for the
return of Alix without her husband.

Circumstances favoured him in a surprising manner. Young Crown and
his wife had travelled down from Chicago in a day coach, and they
had left the train at a small way station some five miles west of
the Windom farm. Crown was penniless. He did not possess the means
to engage a vehicle to transport them from the city to the farm,
nor the money to secure lodging for the night in the cheapest hotel.
Alix's pride stood in the way of an appeal to her husband's father
or to any one of his friends for assistance. It was she who insisted
that they leave the train at Hawkins station and walk to Windom's
house. They had encountered no one who knew them, either on the
train or at the station; while on their cold, tortuous journey
along the dark highway they did not meet a solitary human being.

No one, therefore, was aware of their return.

Edward Crown's presence in the neighbourhood was unknown. If David
Windom's plan succeeded, the fact that Crown had returned with his
wife never would be known. To all inquirers both he and his daughter
were to return the flat but evasive answer: "It is something I cannot
discuss at present," leaving the world to arrive at the obvious
conclusion that Alix's husband had abandoned her. And presently
people, from sheer delicacy, would cease to inquire. No one would
know that Crown had been ill up in the mountains for weeks, had