loyment. The foreman had discharged her at the end of the third
day. Once she had been engaged at an agency as a servant by a man, but
as soon as his wife saw her Nellie was told she would not do. Bitter
humiliating experiences had befallen her. Twice she had been turned out
of rooming houses. Jeff read between the lines that as her time drew
near some overmastering impulse had drawn her back to Verden. Already
she was harboring the thought of death, but she could not die in a
strange place so far from home. Only that morning she had reached town.

After she had retired to the bedroom Jeff sat down in the chair she
had vacated. He heard her moving about for a short time. Presently came
silence.

It must have been an hour and a half later that Sam and Mrs. Anderson
knocked gently on the door.

"Cars stopped running. Had to 'phone for a taxi," Miller whispered.

The agitation of the mother was affecting. Her fingers twitched with
nervousness. Her eyes strayed twenty times in five minutes toward the
door behind which her daughter slept. Every little while she would
tip-toe to it and listen breathlessly. In whispers Jeff told them the
story, answering a hundred eager trembling questions.

Slowly the clock ticked out the seconds of the endless night. Gray day
began to sift into the room. Mrs. Anderson's excursions to the bedroom
door grew more frequent. Sometimes she opened it an inch or two. On one
of these occasions she went in quickly and shut the door behind her.

"Good enough. They don't need us here, Sam. We'll go out and have some
breakfast," Jeff proposed.

On the street they met Billie Gray. He greeted the editor with a knowing
grin. "Good morning, Mr. Farnum. How's everything? Fine and dandy, eh?"

Jeff looked at him sharply. "What the mischief is he doing here?" he
asked Miller by way of comment.

All through breakfast that sinister little figure shadowed his thoughts.
Gray was like a stormy petrel. He was surely there for no good, barring
the chance of its being an accident. Both of them kept their eyes open
on their way back, but they met nobody except a policeman swinging his
club as he leaned against a lamp post and whistled the Merry Widow waltz.

But Farnum was not satisfied. He cautioned both Sam and Mrs. Anderson
to say nothing, above all to give no names or explanation to anybody. A
whisper of the truth would bring reporters down on them in shoals.

"You had better stay here quietly to-day," th