do. First, I must save my child from this
awful man.

Secondly, I must discover the truth as expeditiously as possible,
shrinking from no means.

Thirdly, if I discovered the worst, and it had to be exposed, I must see
that Jane's name was kept entirely out of it. The journalistic squabbles
and mutual antipathy of the two men would be all that would be necessary
to account for their quarrel, together with Gideon's probably intoxicated
state that evening.

I heard Percy moving downstairs still, and I nearly went down to him to
communicate my suspicions to him at once. But, on second thoughts, I
refrained. Percy was worried with a great many things just now. Besides,
he might only laugh at me. I would wait until I had thought it over and
had rather more to go on. Then I would tell him, and he should make what
use he liked of it in the papers. How interested he would be if the man
who was one of his bitterest journalistic foes, who fought so venomously
everything that he and his press stood for, and who was the
editor-designate of the possible new anti-Pinkerton daily, should be
proved to be the murderer of his son-in-law. What a _scoop_! The vulgar
journalese slang slid into my mind strangely, as light words will in
grave moments.

But I pulled myself together. I was going too far ahead. After all, I
was still merely in the realms of fancy and suspicion. It is true that I
have queer, almost uncanny intuitive powers, which have seldom failed me.
But still, I had as yet little to go on.

With an effort of will, I put the matter out of my mind and tried to
sleep. Counsel would, I felt sure, come in the morning.

4

It did. I woke with the words ringing in my head as if some one had
spoken them--'Why not consult Amy Ayres?'

Of course! That was the very thing. I would go that afternoon.

Amy Ayres had been a friend of mine from girlhood. We had always been in
the closest sympathy, although our paths had diverged greatly since we
were young. We had written our first stories together for _Forget-me-not_
and _Hearth and Home_, and together enjoyed the first sweets of success.
But, while I had pursued the literary path, Amy had not. Her interests
had turned more and more to the occult. She had fallen in with and
greatly admired Mrs. Besant. When her husband (a Swedenborgian minister)
left her at the call of his conscience to convert the inhabitants of Peru
to Swedenborgianism, and finally lost his life, under peculi