matted hair, had been brought to her.

"This is the work of political enemies" echoed Frank T. Scanlan.

"Dr. Cronin has been the victim of a political assassination" was the
immediate verdict of a number of prominent Irishmen of New York,
Philadelphia and other places. And the developments soon to come showed
that they knew whereof they spoke.

But the general public, while it listened and eagerly discussed the
mystery, was inclined to be sceptical.

A political murder in the free, liberty loving United States. It could
not be! Two Presidents had, it was true, been shot in cold blood by
madmen; and in different parts of the country and on divers occasions
men had been killed in scrimmages at the polls as a result of troubles
growing out of election affairs. But these were not political murders in
the general acceptation of the term, not the deliberate well planned
taking of life; not the outgrowth of a conspiracy to "remove" some one
whose particular political predelictions or position had rendered him
obnoxious to those politically associated with him. "Such things might
happen abroad it is true" said the sceptics, "but on American soil it
would be an impossibility."

DR. CRONIN AS A PROPHET.

Dr. Cronin's friends were not among the sceptics. Very well they knew
that there was more than ordinary ground for the fears they had
expressed. There was abundant evidence that long before his death the
physician had known that his life was threatened, and that any day might
be his last. This knowledge, or belief,--it may be put in either
way--was clearly outlined in a pamphlet which, under the title of "Is
it a conspiracy," he caused to be printed and circulated among his
friends a year before his taking off. In this document which, at the
time was summed up by most of those that read it, as a mass of words and
phrases without meaning to any one but the writer, Dr. Cronin clearly
outlined the fact that he would meet his end by violent means. There was
a key to the story which, when read between the lines after his
disappearance, made its meaning clear to many of those to whom it had
previously seemed but a jumble of incoherences.

The closing paragraph, in particular, was an extraordinary indication of
the prophetic spirit that had been generated in the physician by the
dangers that he knew assailed him.

"It strikes me that your funeral would be a largely attended one," was
the question that he put into the mouth