nt with these, I don't know," said the vindictive
doctor. "I only hope they will take them all together. There was a
triple dose of strychnine in one which I wrote for Garmory's dog!"

Now Miss Orrin was a clever woman, and she grasped at once the immense
moral value of having the support of Mr. Ablethorpe and his friend and
spiritual director Mr. De la Poer. It was quite evident that for the
sisters the situation at Deep Moat Grange would no longer be tenable.
Mr. Stennis might die any day. The Longtown doctor gave little hope of
ultimate recovery. The will had been removed out of Aphra's reach.
True, she might possibly induce the old man to make another,
disinheriting his granddaughter. If Elsie died in her prison,
doubtless sooner or later all would be found out. There were other
things also.

It came as the happiest of solutions, therefore, to the strenuous head
of the Orrin family, when, a few days after, Mr. Ablethorpe proposed to
charge himself with the care of the three "innocents"--Honorine,
Camilla, and Sidonia. He knew of a convent, the good sisters of which
gave up their lives to the care of women mentally afflicted. Aphra
refused point blank any such assistance for herself, even temporarily.
But for her sisters she rejoiced openly, and was indeed, after her
fashion, really grateful to the two young clergymen who had taken up
the cause of the witless and the friendless.

"I know why you do this," she said, "it is that you may clear the board
of those who have neither art nor part in the evil. Then you will
strike the more surely. I do not blame you, Mr. Ablethorpe, But for
me, I will not go with my sisters, who have done nothing--known
nothing. If the guilty are to suffer--and if the guilty are indeed my
brother and my master--then I will stand in the dock by their side. No
one shall ever say that Aphra Orrin went back on a friend, or refused
her full share of responsibility. All the same, Mr. Ablethorpe--and
you, Mr. De la Poer--I am grateful from my heart for what you are doing
for my poor sisters. For me, I am neither mad nor irresponsible--only
as the more notable sinner, in the greater need of your ghostly
counsels!"

CHAPTER XXV

A LETTER FROM JOSEPH YARROW, SENIOR, TO HIS SON JOSEPH YARROW, JUNIOR

Dear Joe--Yours of the 10th received and contents noted. You ask me to
tell you in writing what happened when, like a fool, I allowed myself
to be caught and imprisoned by the o