ntence?"

"With pleasure, madam; I have said them often enough to myself. First,
then: 'I return your daughter to you!'"

"So! Mr. Adams had some one's daughter in charge whom he returns. Whose
daughter? Not that young man's daughter, certainly, for that would
necessitate her being a small child. Besides, if these words had been
meant for his assailant, why make so remarkable an effort to hide them
from him?"

"Very true! I have said the same thing to myself."

"Yet, if not for him, for whom, then? For the old gentleman who came in
later?"

"It is possible; since hearing of him I have allowed myself to regard
this as among the possibilities, especially as the next words of this
strange communication are: 'She is here.' Now the only woman who was
there a few minutes previous to this old gentleman's visit was the
light-haired girl whom you saw carried out."

"Very true; but why do you reason as if this paper had just been
written? It might have been an old scrap, referring to past sorrows or
secrets."

"These words were written that afternoon. The paper on which they were
scrawled was torn from a sheet of letter paper lying on the desk, and
the pen with which they were inscribed--you must have noticed where it
lay, quite out of its natural place on the extreme edge of the table."

"Certainly, sir; but I had little idea of the significance we might come
to attach to it. These words are connected, then, with the girl I saw.
And she is not Evelyn or he would not have repeated in this note the
bird's catch-word, 'Remember Evelyn!' I wonder if she is Evelyn?"
proceeded Miss Butterworth, pointing to the one large picture which
adorned the wall.

"We may call her so for the nonce. So melancholy a face may well suggest
some painful family secret. But how explain the violent part played by
the young man, who is not mentioned in these abrupt and hastily penned
sentences! It is all a mystery, madam, a mystery which we are wasting
time to attempt to solve."

"Yet I hate to give it up without an effort. Those words, now. There
were some other words you have not repeated to me."

"They came before that injunction, 'Remember Evelyn!' They bespoke a
resolve. 'Neither she nor you will ever see me again.'"

"Ah! but these few words are very significant, Mr. Gryce. Could he have
dealt that blow himself? May he have been a suicide after all?"

"Madam, you have the right to inquire; but from Bartow's pantomime, you
must have