," remarked the landlord.

"Old Swallowtail? Old Swallowtail? And who is he?" queried the
stranger.

Hopper was a born gossip, and if there was any one person he loved to
talk of and criticize and "pick to pieces" it was Old Swallowtail. So
he rambled on for a half hour, relating the Cragg history in all its
details, including the story of Ingua and Ingua's mother, Nan Cragg,
who had married some unknown chap named Scammel, who did not long
survive the ceremony.

Mr. Sinclair listened quietly, seeming to enjoy his cigar more than he
did the Cragg gossip. He asked no questions, letting the landlord
ramble on as he would, and finally, when Hopper had exhausted his fund
of fact and fiction, which were about evenly mixed, his guest bade him
good night and retired to his private room.

"It ain't eight o'clock, yet," said the landlord to his wife, "but a
feller with nerves is best asleep. An' when he's asleep he won't waste
our kerosene."

No, Mr. Sinclair didn't waste the Hopper kerosene. He had a little
pocket arrangement which supplied him with light when, an hour before
midnight, he silently rose, dressed himself and prepared to leave the
hotel. He was not attired in what Mary Ann called his "glad rags" now,
but in a dark gray suit of homespun that was nearly the color of the
night. The blond wig was carefully locked in a suit case, a small black
cap was drawn over his eyes, and thus--completely transformed--Mr.
Hopper's guest had no difficulty in gaining the street without a
particle of noise betraying him to the family of his host.

He went to the postoffice, pried open a window, unlocked the mail bag
that was ready for Jim Bennett to carry to the morning train at
Chargrove and from it abstracted a number of letters which he unsealed
and read with great care. They had all been written and posted by
Hezekiah Cragg. The man spent a couple of hours here, resealing the
envelopes neatly and restoring them to the mail bag, after which, he
attached the padlock and replaced the bag in exactly its former
position. When he had left the little front room which was devoted by
the Bennetts to the mail service, the only evidence of his visit was a
bruised depression beside the window-sash which was quite likely to
escape detection.

After this the stranger crept through the town and set off at a brisk
pace toward the west, taking the road over the bridge and following it
to the connecting branch and thence to the lane. A hal