ke a
reunion than a first meeting and was so laden with perfect understanding
that, even yet, speech seemed scarcely worth while.

Thinking over that moment, in later days, Paul Harley remembered that
he had been prompted by some small inner voice to say: "So you have come
back?" It was recognition. Of the hundreds of men and women who came
into his life for a while, and ere long went out of it again, he knew,
by virtue of that sixth sense of his, that Phil Abingdon had come to
stay--whether for joy or sorrow he could not divine.

It was really quite brief--that interval of silence--although perhaps
long enough to bridge the ages.

"How brave of you, Miss Abingdon!" said Harley. "How wonderfully brave
of you!"

"She's an Abingdon," came the deep tones of Doctor McMurdoch. "She
arrived only two hours ago and here she is."

"There can be no rest for me, Doctor," said the girl, and strove
valiantly to control her voice, "until this dreadful doubt is removed.
Mr. Harley"--she turned to him appealingly--"please don't study my
feelings in the least; I can bear anything--now; just tell me what
happened. Oh! I had to come. I felt that I had to come."

As Paul Harley placed an armchair for his visitor, his glance met that
of Doctor McMurdoch, and in the gloomy eyes he read admiration of this
girl who could thus conquer the inherent weakness of her sex and at such
an hour and after a dreadful ordeal set her hand to the task which fate
had laid upon her.

Doctor McMurdoch sat down on a chair beside the door, setting his silk
hat upon the floor and clasping his massive chin with his hand.

"I will endeavour to do as you wish, Miss Abingdon," said Harley,
glancing anxiously at the physician.

But Doctor McMurdoch returned only a dull stare. It was evident
that this man of stone was as clay in the hands of Phil Abingdon. He
deprecated the strain which she was imposing upon her nervous system,
already overwrought to the danger point, but he was helpless for all his
dour obstinacy. Harley, looking down at the girl's profile, read a new
meaning into the firm line of her chin. He was conscious of an insane
desire to put his arms around this new acquaintance who seemed in some
indefinable yet definite way to belong to him and to whisper the tragic
story he had to tell, comforting her the while.

He began to relate what had taken place at the first interview, when Sir
Charles had told him of the menace which he had believed to