o, that after her recent
experiences in France and elsewhere, her health was in rather a precarious
state.

At least, he was quite sure that Ruth's nerves were "all out of tune," as
he expressed it, and he believed she was not entirely responsible for
what she had said.

The girl had allowed her mind to dwell so much upon that scenario she had
lost that it might be she was not altogether clear upon the subject. Mr.
Hammond had talked with Tom about the robbery at the Red Mill, and it
looked to the moving picture producer as though there might be some
considerable doubt of Ruth's having been robbed at all.

In that terrific wind and rain storm almost anything might have blown
away. Tom admitted he had seen a barrel sailing through the air at the
height of the storm.

"Why couldn't the papers and note books have been caught up by a gust of
wind and carried into the river?" Mr. Hammond asked himself. "The river
was right there, and it possesses a strong current."

The president of the Alectrion Film Corporation knew the Lumano, and the
vicinity of the Red Mill as well. It seemed to him very probable that the
scenario had been lost. And the gold-mounted fountain pen? Why, that might
have easily rolled down a crack in the summer-house floor.

The whole thing was a matter so fortuitous that Mr. Hammond could not
accept Ruth's version of the loss without some doubt, in any case. And
then, her suddenly finding in the only good scenario submitted to him by
any of his company, one that she believed was plagiarized from her lost
story, seemed to put a cap on the whole matter. Ruth might be just a
little "off soundings," as the fishermen about Herringport would say. Mr.
Hammond was afraid that she had been carried into a situation of mind
where suspicion took the place of certainty.

She had absolutely nothing with which to corroborate her statement. Nobody
had seen Ruth's scenario nor had she discussed the plot with any person.
Secrecy necessary to the successful production of anything new in the line
of picture plays was all right. Mr. Hammond advised it. But in this case
it seemed that the scenario writer had been altogether too secret.

Had Ruth not chanced to read the hermit's script before making her
accusation, Mr. Hammond would have felt differently. Better, had she been
willing to relate to him in the first place the story of the plot of her
scenario and how she had treated it, her present accusation might have
se