s to
make her entirely oblivious of the rich and delicate apparel she thus
wantonly sacrificed. But it was not this alone which attracted my
attention. In her hand she held a paper, and the sight of that paper and
the way she clutched it rather disturbed my late conclusions. Had her
errand been one of search rather than of arrangement? and was this
crumpled letter the sole result of a half-hour's ransacking in an attic
room at the dead of night? I was fain to think so, for in the course of
another half-hour her light went out. Relieved that she had not left the
house, I was still anxious as to the cause of her strange conduct.

Mayor Packard did not come in till daybreak. He found me waiting for him
in the lower hall.

"Well?" he eagerly inquired.

"Mrs. Packard is asleep, I hope. A shrill laugh, ringing through the
house shortly after her return, gave her a nervous shock and she begged
that she might be left undisturbed till morning."

He turned from hanging up his overcoat, and gave me a short stare.

"A laugh!" he repeated. "Who could have laughed like that? We are not a
very jolly crowd here."

"I don't know, sir. I thought it must have been either Mr. Steele or
Nixon, the butler, but each denied it. There was no one else in this
part of the house."

"Mrs. Packard is very sensitive just now," he remarked. Then as he
turned away toward the library door: "I will throw myself on a lounge. I
have but an hour or two before me, as I have my preparations to make
for leaving town on the early morning train. I shall have some final
instructions to give you."

CHAPTER VIII. THE PARAGRAPH

I was up betimes. Would Mrs. Packard appear at breakfast? I hardly
thought so. Yet who knows? Such women have great recuperative powers,
and from one so mysteriously affected anything might be expected.
Ready at eight, I hastened down to the second floor to find the lady,
concerning whom I had had these doubts, awaiting me on the threshold of
her room. She was carefully dressed and looked pale enough to have been
up for hours. An envelope was in her hand, and the smile which hailed my
approach was cold and constrained.

"Good morning," said she. "Let us go down. Let us go down together. I
slept wretchedly and do not feel very strong. When did Mr. Packard come
in?"

"Late. He went directly to the library. He said that he had but a short
time in which to rest, and would take what sleep he could get on the
lounge, when I