is friend; you ought to know it as well
as I do."

"Ah, that's different," said the Little Red Doctor, giving me one of his
queer looks. "Yes; you're a pig-headed old man, Dominie."

"I'm a believer in character."

"I don't know of any other man equally pig-headed, except possibly one.
He's old, too."

"Gale Sheldon," said I, naming the gentle, withered librarian of a
branch library a few blocks to the westward, the only other resident of
Our Square who had unfailingly supported me in my loyalty to the memory
of the last of the Worths.

"Yes. He's waiting for us now in his rooms. Will you come?"

Perceiving that there was something back of this--there usually is, in
the Little Red Doctor's maneuvers--I rose and we set out. As we passed
the Worth house it seemed grimmer and bleaker than ever before. There
was something savage and desperate in its desolation. The cold curse of
abandonment lay upon it. At the turn of the corner the Little Red Doctor
said abruptly.

"She's dead."

"Who?" I demanded.

"The girl. The woman in the case."

"In the Ely Crouch case? A woman? There was never any woman hinted at."

"No. And there never would have been as long as she was alive.
Now--Well, I'll leave Sheldon to explain her. He loved her, too, in
his way."

In Gale Sheldon's big, still room, crowded with the friendly ghosts of
mighty books, a clear fire was burning. One shaded lamp at the desk was
turned on, for though it was afternoon the blizzard cast a gloom like
dusk. The Little Red Doctor retired to a far corner where he was all but
merged in the shadows.

"Have you seen this?" Sheldon asked me, pointing to the table.

Thereon was spread strange literature for the scholarly taste of our
local book-worm, a section from the most sensational of New York's
Sunday newspapers. From the front page, surrounded by a barbarous
conglomeration of headlines and uproarious type, there smiled happily
forth a face of such appealing loveliness as no journalistic vulgarity
could taint or profane. I recognized it at once, as any one must have
done who had ever seen the unforgettable original. It was Virginia
Kingsley, who, two years before, had been Sheldon's assistant. The
picture was labeled, "Death Ends Wanderlust of Mysterious Heiress," and
the article was couched in a like style of curiosity-piquing
sensationalism. Stripped of its fulsome verbiage, it told of the girl's
recent death in Italy, after traveling about Europe wit