I could feel a hot flush of indignation suffuse my entire countenance. “You have entirely misapprehended the nature of the relationship that exists between Virginia and myself,” I declared. “She is not my daughter, but rather that of the good woman in whose company she has just now departed, my aunt Maria Clemm. Virginia is, in short, my cousin—though it is my fervent prayer that, before another year has passed, she will consent to be my wife!”

At this pronouncement, the frontiersman regarded me with an expression of slightly stupefied wonderment. He stared at me wordlessly before expelling a low, barely audible whistle. “If that don’t beat all,” he muttered beneath his breath. “Well,” he continued after a momentary pause, “it ain’t your family circumstances that I come here to discuss, Cricket—though I will confess that the whole situation sounds a mite peculiar. But as I say, that ain’t none o’ Davy Crockett’s business.”

“And what precisely is this business of yours, Colonel Crockett?” I inquired. “For an individual engaged in a mission of such purported urgency, you are, if I may say so, proceeding at a most dilatory pace.”

“It’s that infarnal miscreant, Neuendorf,” sighed Crockett. “It appears that he ain’t the killer after all.” In the warm glow of the lamplight, I could not help but discern that his customary expression of inordinate self-confidence had been replaced by one of self-doubt.

“On what evidence,” I exclaimed, “is your assertion based?”

“On the fact that he warn’t even in town last night when Mrs. Macready got herself kilt. He’s been gone for near a week. A dozen folks has come forward to swear oaths to it. The pestiferous varmint was off workin’ on a fishin’ vessel that only just sailed back into port at daybreak this mornin’”

This revelation produced a most singular response within my bosom: a not unpleasurable feeling of vindication, followed at once by an intense throb of dismay.

As though possessed of a preternatural faculty that permitted him access to my innermost thoughts, the frontiersman declared, “Aye, Cricket, it’s a mighty plaguesome state of affairs, and no mistake. For if that devilish rascal Neuendorf ain’t guilty, then the butcherous killer is still walkin’ the streets”

A long moment passed while I digested this intelligence. “The situation you have described,” I said at last, “while certainly distressing, is nothing less than what I had already surmised. Indeed, immediately prior to your unanticipated arrival, I was endeavoring to decipher the mysterious word left at the crime scene, under the conviction that it did not, in fact, spell out Neuendorf’s name.” And here I held up the sheet of paper upon which the mysterious notation was transcribed.