had
helped to hide. Perhaps when he had gone Margery herself had not known
the worst.

Latimer, having finished his reading, rested his head on his hand for a
dull moment and stared down at the letter lying upon the ground at his
feet--the letter he had dropped as he took out the others. He felt as if
he had not strength or inclination to pick it up--he had passed through a
black storm which had swept away from him the power to feel more than a
dull, heavy, physical prostration.

But after a few minutes he stooped and picked the letter up. He laid it
on his knee by the other two and sat gazing again.

"He did not know," he said, in a colourless voice. "I told him. He heard
it first from me when I told him how she died."

The handwriting of the letters was Baird's--every character and word and
phrase were his--Baird was the man who had written them.

CHAPTER XXXIX

The street in which the lecture hall stood began to wear the air of being
a centre of interest some time before the doors of the building were
opened. People who had not been able to obtain reserved seats wished to
arrive early. The lectures which had begun by being popular had ended by
being fashionable. At the outset an audience of sober, religious
tendencies had attended them, but after the first one had been delivered
other elements had presented themselves. There had been a sprinkling of
serious scientific men, a prominent politician or so, some society women
whose faces and toilettes were well-known and lavishly described in the
newspapers. On this last night the audience was largely of the
fashionable political world. Carriages drove up one after another and
deposited well-dressed persons who might have been expected that night to
appear at certain brilliant social functions, and who had come to hear
"Repentance" instead.

"He has always had good audiences," said a member of the Committee of
Arrangement, "but he has never had one like this--in Washington at least.
There is the Secretary of State with his wife and daughter. I believe the
President is to be here. He has awakened an enormous interest. The house
will be literally crammed. They are filling the aisle with seats
already."

Baird was in the small retiring-room which had been arranged for his
convenience. His journey had somewhat fatigued him, and he was in the
physical and mental condition to feel glad that this lecture was to be
the last of the series. He was going back to Wi