BENJAMIN McNEIL MURDOCK
ter, or heard a concert, or even dropped into a moving-picture show.
The funeral of his parents, and the murder trial that followed, made only a momentary interruption in his routine. After it was all over he returned to his office tragically depressed, but freer in his mind because the apprehension of disgrace had been removed by his father's death. He had saved twenty-one hundred dollars. He owned a farm. He began to figure on how much it would cost him to live in the country; what was the best rate of interest he could get on a safe investment if he withdrew his money from the savings-bank and bought bonds; and what were the possibilities of scientific farming if he took it up.
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Turning these things over in his mind, he was walking back from his office one August evening about half past six, when he passed the restaurant windows of a Fifth Avenue hotel and saw a young woman dining there with an elderly man behind the flowers of the window-sill boxes. The window was open, and she looked up as Murdock glanced at her. Their eyes met. His was an absent-minded glance, and he had passed on before it occurred to him that she had seemed to recognize him. He decided that she had been looking at some one else on the street. Nevertheless, at the corner, instead of continuing on his way to his room, he
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