easoned there could be no genuine Fairfax; to-night
he entertained many doubts of his former deductions. He found it
possible to construe Dorothy's actions both ways. She was afraid to
have him search out the man who had written her wedding certificate,
perhaps because it was a fraud, or perhaps because there _was_ a
Fairfax somewhere, concerning whom something must be hidden.

The murder mystery, the business of the will, even the vengeance he
promised himself he would wreak on Theodore, sank into significance in
the light of his personal worry. There was only one thing worth while,
and that was love.

He was rapidly approaching a frame of mind in which no sacrifice would
be too great to be made, could he only be certain of winning Dorothy,
heart-free, for his own.

For more than an hour he sat thinking, in the car, oblivious to the
flight of time, or to the towns through which he was passing. He gave
it up at last and, taking from his pocket a book he employed for
memoranda, studied certain items there, supplied by Dorothy, concerning
her uncle and his ways of life. There were names of his friends and
his enemies among the scribbled data, together with descriptive bits
concerning Hardy's personality.

Marking down additional suggestions and otherwise planning his work to
be done at Rockdale, Garrison reflected there was little apparent hope
of clearing young Durgin of suspicion, unless one trifling hint should
supply the clew. Dorothy had stated that her Uncle John had long had
some particularly bitter and malicious enemy, a man unknown to herself,
from whom she believed Mr. Hardy might have been fleeing, from time to
time, in the trips which had become the habit of his life.

That this constant moving from place to place had been the bane of his
existence was a theory that Dorothy had formed a year before. Yet, for
all she knew, it might have been young Foster Durgin whom her uncle was
trying to avoid!

The train connection for Rockdale was wretchedly timed. What with a
long wait at the junction and a long delay at a way station farther
out, it was nearly one o'clock when at length his destination was
reached and Garrison, with his steel-trap suit-case in hand, found his
way to a second-rate hotel, where, to his great relief, the beds were
far better than they looked.

He had taken the precaution to register as Henry Hilborn, realizing
that Rockdale doubtless abounded in acquaintances of Hardy's who w