she telegraphed that her mother was
getting well so fast that she would come, now, at his word.

The next morning she betrayed to Ruth a glad sense of relief as she
showed her a dispatch from Arthur, which read: "Going on another trip
to-morrow. Stay till I write."

Ruth repeated it to her father and brother at their noonday meal.
Leonard made no comment, but the General asked pleasantly--

"Is she certain he won't come in on this evening's express?" He was
discerning more than any one wanted him to.

However, at dusk came the train, took water at the tank, stopped at the
station, and passed on, and Arthur did not appear.

"Well, I'll go to bed," blithely spoke the General. "I'm not so old as I
used to be, but I'm tired, after writing that letter this afternoon--to
Godfrey. Good-night." So he gave fair notice that he had moved in this
matter, himself.

"I didn't know father had received a letter from Godfrey," said Ruth,
shading her face from the lamp, and lifting to Leonard a smile which
implied that it would have been but fair for him to have told her.

"It came the day before Arthur went away," replied Leonard, and Ruth
reluctantly chose a new topic.

They rarely had an evening together thus, and with a soft rain falling
at the open windows they sat and talked on many themes in what was to
them a very talkative way. When something brought up the subject of the
late noted trial, Ruth asked her brother how it had first come to him to
suspect so unsuspected a man.

His reply was tardy. "Partly," he said, and mused while he spoke,
"because I am so unsuspected a man myself."

He looked up with a smile, half play, half pain. "I know what the mind
of an unsuspected man is capable of--under pressure."

The questioner looked on him with fond faith, and then, dropping her
eyes to her needlework, said, "That wasn't all that prompted you, was
it?"

"No," replied the brother, again musing. "I had noticed the singular
value of wanton guesswork."

"I thought so," said the sister

Martha Finley (1828 - 1909) was a teacher and author of numerous works, the most well known being the 28 volume Elsie Dinsmore series which was published over a span of 38 years. The daughter of Presbyterian minister Dr. James Brown Finley and his wife and cousin Maria Theresa Brown Finley, she was born on April 26th, 1828 in Chillicothe, Ohio. Finley wrote many of her books under the psodonym Martha Farquharson. She died in 1909 in Elkton, Maryland, where she moved in 1876.

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