ers. "An idle question, Mrs. Krill. I have no
wish to force your confidence."

"There is no forcing in the matter," responded the woman. "I have taken
quite a fancy to you, Mr. Beecot, and you shall know what I do."

"Pray do not tell me if you would rather not."

"But I would rather," said Mrs. Krill, bluntly; "it will prevent your
misconception of anything you may hear about us. My husband's real name
was Lemuel Krill, and he married me thirty years ago. I will be frank
with you and admit that neither of us were gentlefolks. We kept a
public-house on the outskirts of Christchurch in Hants, called 'The Red
Pig.'" She looked anxiously at him as she spoke.

"A strange name."

"Have you never heard of it before?"

"No. Had I heard the name it would have remained in my memory, from its
oddity."

Paul might have been mistaken, but Mrs. Krill certainly seemed relieved.
Yet if she had anything to conceal in connection with "The Red Pig,"
why should she have mentioned the name.

"It is not a first-class hotel," she went on smoothly, and again with
her false smile. "We had only farm laborers and such like as customers.
But the custom was good, and we did very well. Then my husband took to
drink."

"In that respect he must have changed," said Paul, quickly, "for all the
time I knew him--six months it was--I never saw him the worse for drink,
and I certainly never heard from those who would be likely to know that
he indulged in alcohol to excess. All the same," added Paul, with an
after-thought of his conversation with Sylvia in the Embankment garden,
"I fancied, from his pale face and shaking hands, and a tightness of the
skin, that he might drink."

"Exactly. He did. He drank brandy in large quantities, and, strange to
say, he never got drunk."

"What do you mean exactly?" asked Beecot, curiously.

"Well," said Mrs. Krill, biting the top of her fan and looking over it,
"Lemuel--I'll call him by the old name--never grew red in the face, and
even after years of drinking he never showed any signs of intemperance.
Certainly his hands would shake at times, but I never noticed
particularly the tightness of the skin you talk of."

"A certain shiny look," explained Paul.

"Quite so. I never noticed it. But he never got drunk so as to lose his
head or his balance," went on Mrs. Krill; "but he became a demon."

"A demon?"

"Yes," said the woman, emphatically, "as a rule he was a timid, nervous,
little man, like a fri