fectly similar in the world.
And what eyes! Can it be possible?"

The magistrate instituted inquiries into his life, and he discovered
this, which removed all his doubts.

Five years previously, Monsieur X---- had been a very poor, but very
brilliant medical student, who, although he never took his doctor's
degree, had already made himself remarkable by his microbiological
researches.

A young and very rich widow had fallen in love with him and married
him. She had one child by her first marriage, and in the space of six
months, first the child and then the mother died of typhoid fever, and
thus Monsieur X---- had inherited a large fortune, in due form, and
without any possible dispute. Everybody said that he had attended to
the two patients with the utmost devotion. Now, were these two deaths
the two crimes mentioned in his letter?

But then, Monsieur X---- must have poisoned his two victims with the
microbes of typhoid fever, which he had skilfully cultivated in them,
so as to make the disease incurable, even by the most devoted care and
attention. Why not?

"Do you believe it?" I asked Monsieur de Vargnes.

"Absolutely," he replied. "And the most terrible thing about it is,
that the villain is right when he defies me to force him to confess his
crime publicly, for I see no means of obtaining a confession, none
whatever. For a moment, I thought of magnetism, but who could magnetize
that man with those pale, cold, bright eyes? With such eyes, he would
force the magnetizer to denounce himself as the culprit."

And then he said, with a deep sigh:

"Ah! Formerly there was something good about justice!"

And when he saw my inquiring looks, he added in a firm and perfectly
convinced voice:

"Formerly, justice had torture at its command."

"Upon my word," I replied, with all an author's unconscious and simple
egotism, "it is quite certain that without the torture, this strange
tale will have no conclusion, and that is very unfortunate, as far as
regards the story I intended to make out of it."

XI

THE RIVAL GHOSTS[1]

Brander Matthews

[1] Reprinted by permission of the author.

The good ship sped on her way across the calm Atlantic. It was an
outward passage, according to the little charts which the company had
charily distributed, but most of the passengers were homeward bound,
after a summer of rest and recreation, and they were counting the days
before they might hope to see Fire Isla