ard nothing,
but it would be well if we heard more. I think I understand your
difficulty. I am a physician and a Frenchman and no prude. This
renunciation which you make is but the noble gesture. You have been
unfortunate, and now you fear. Have courage; no infection is so bad
there is no remedy----"

Ned's laugh was hard and brittle as the tinkle of a breaking glass. "I
only wish it were the thing you think," he interrupted. "I'd have you
give me salvarsan and see what happened; but there isn't any treatment
I can take for this. I'm not delirious, and I'm not crazy, gentlemen;
I know just what I'm saying. Insane as it may sound, I'm pledged to
the dead, and there isn't any way to bail me out."

"_Eh_, what is it you say?" de Grandin's small blue eyes were gleaming
with the light of battle as he caught the occult implication in Ned's
declaration. "Pledged to the dead? _Comment cela?_"

* * * * *

Ned raised himself unsteadily and balanced on the table edge.

"It happened in New Orleans last winter," he answered. "I'd finished
up my business and was on the loose, and thought I'd walk alone
through the _Vieux Carre_--the old French Quarter. I'd had dinner at
Antoine's and stopped around at the Old Absinthe House for a few
drinks, then strolled down to the French Market for a cup of chicory
coffee and some doughnuts. Finally I walked down Royal Street to look
at Madame Lalaurie's old mansion; that's the famous haunted house, you
know. I wanted to see if I could find a ghost. Good Lord, I _wanted_
to!

"The moon was full that night, but the house was still as old Saint
Denis Cemetery, so after peering through the iron grilles that shut
the courtyard from the street for half an hour or so, I started back
toward Canal Street.

"I'd almost reached Bienville Street when just as I passed one of
those funny two-storied iron-grilled balconies so many of the old
houses have I heard something drop on the sidewalk at my feet. It was
a japonica, one of those rose-like flowers they grow in the courtyard
gardens down there. When I looked up, a girl was laughing at me from
the second story of the balcony. '_Mon fleuron, monsieur, s'il vous
plait_,' she called, stretching down a white arm for the bloom.

[Illustration: DR. TROWBRIDGE.]

"The moonlight hung about her like a veil of silver tissue, and I
could see her plainly as though it had been noon. Most New Orleans
girls are dark. She was fair,