let a
word fall of the nature of those you have just heard. Indeed it was
not till I repeated to him some of the expressions he was continually
letting fall in his sleep, that he commenced to accuse himself of crime
and talk of retribution."

"You say that your husband frightened you on that night by appearing
suddenly at the door when you thought him on his way to Poughkeepsie. Is
Dr. Zabriskie in the habit of thus going and coming alone at an hour so
late as this must have been?"

"You forget that to the blind, night is less full of perils than the
day. Often and often has my husband found his way to his patients'
houses alone after midnight; but on this especial evening he had Leonard
with him. Leonard was his chauffeur, and always accompanied him when he
went any distance."

"Well, then," said I, "all we have to do is to summon Leonard and hear
what he has to say concerning this affair. He will surely know whether
or not his master went into the house next door."

"Leonard has left us," she said. "Dr. Zabriskie has another chauffeur
now. Besides (I have nothing to conceal from you), Leonard was not with
him when he returned to the house that evening or the doctor would not
have been without his portmanteau till the next day. Something--I have
never known what--caused them to separate, and that is why I have no
answer to give the doctor when he accuses himself of committing a deed
that night so wholly out of keeping with every other act of his life."

"And have you never asked Leonard why they separated and why he allowed
his master to come home alone after the shock he had received at the
station?"

"I did not know there was any reason for my doing so till long after he
had left us."

"And when did he leave?"

"That I do not remember. A few weeks or possibly a few days after that
dreadful night."

"And where is he now?"

"Ah, that I have not the least means of knowing. But," she objected, in
sudden distrust, "what do you want of Leonard? If he did not follow Dr.
Zabriskie to his own door, he could tell us nothing that would convince
my husband that he is labouring under an illusion."

"But he might tell us something which would convince us that Dr.
Zabriskie was not himself after the accident; that he--"

"Hush!" came from her lips in imperious tones. "I will not believe that
he shot Mr. Hasbrouck even if you prove him to have been insane at the
time. How could he? My husband is blind. It would take