y to make the
saying completely colorless.

"Yes."

"And he was taken?"

"He was; but he made his escape again, almost at once. He is still a
free man."

Instantly the primitive instinct of self-preservation, the instinct of
the hunted fugitive, sprang alert in the listener.

"How can you be sure of that?" he asked, and in his own ears his voice
sounded like the clang of an alarm bell.

Again a silence fell, surcharged, this one, with all the old frightful
possibilities. Once more the loathsome fever quickened the pulses of the
man at bay, and the curious needle-like prickling of the skin came to
signal the return of the homicidal fear-frenzy. The reaction to the
normal racked him like the passing of a mortal sickness when his
accusing angel said in her most matter-of-fact tone:

"I know he is free; I have it on the best possible authority. The
detectives who are searching for him have been here to see me--or, at
least, one of them has."

The hunted one laid hold of the partial reprieve with a mighty grip and
drew himself out of the reactionary whirlpool.

"To see you? Why should they trouble you?"

"On general man-hunting principles, I suppose," was the calm reply.
"Since I gave the necessary information once, they seem to think I can
give it again. It is very annoying."

"It is an outrage!" declared the listener warmly. And afterward, with
only the proper friendly emphasis: "I hope it is an annoyance past."

His companion leaned forward in her chair and cautiously parted the
leafy vine screen.

"Look across the street--under those trees at the water's edge: do you
see him?"

Griswold looked and was reasonably sure that he could make out the
shadowy figure of a man leaning against one of the trees.

"That is my shadow," she said, lowering her voice; "Mr. Matthew Broffin,
of the Colburne Detective Agency, in New Orleans. He has a foolish idea
that I am in communication with the man he is searching for, and he was
brutal enough to tell me so. What he expects to accomplish by keeping an
absurd watch upon our house and dogging everybody who comes and goes, I
can't imagine."

"You have told your father?" said Griswold, anxious to learn how far
this new alarm fire had spread.

"Certainly; and he has made his protest. But it doesn't do any good; the
man keeps on spying, as you see. But we have wandered a long way from
your book. I've been trying to prove to you that I am not fit to
criticise it."

"N