't."

"So it is strong enough, but not----"

"Look!" she cried, pointing over the surface of the lake. "See that
wave!"

"Suffering Noah and the Flood!" exclaimed Boscombe.

As he spoke, the wave burst against the dam, and now they had Niagara
in reality. There was a crash, and what seemed to be a series of
explosions, then the whole structure dissolved away, and before the
appalled eyes of the sight-seers, the valley town crumpled up like a
pack of cards, and even the tall mills themselves, that staggered at the
impact of the flood, slowly settled down, and were engulfed in the
seething turmoil of maddened waters.

[Illustration: "'This,' he cried, 'is murder.'"]

For a time no voice could be heard in the deafening uproar. It was
Boscombe who spoke when the waters began to subside.

"This," he cried, "is murder!"

He glared at Constance Maturin, who stood pale, silent and trembling.

"I told you she was mad," he roared at Stranleigh. "It is your money
that in some devilish way has caused this catastrophe. If any lives are
lost, it is rank murder!"

"It is murder," agreed Stranleigh, quietly. "Whoever is responsible for
the weakness of that dam should be hanged!"

V.--IN SEARCH OF GAME.

The warm morning gave promise of a blistering hot day, as Lord
Stranleigh strolled, in his usual leisurely fashion, up Fifth Avenue.
High as the thermometer already stood, the young man gave no evidence
that he was in the least incommoded by the temperature. In a welter of
heated, hurrying people, he produced the effect of an iceberg that had
somehow drifted down into the tropics. The New York tailor entrusted
with the duty of clothing him quite outdistanced his London rival, who
had given Lord Stranleigh the reputation of being the best-dressed man
in England. Now his lordship was dangerously near the point where he
might be called the best-dressed man in New York, an achievement worthy
of a Prince's ambition.

His lordship, with nothing to do, and no companionship to hope for,
since everyone was at work, strolled into the splendour of the
University Club and sought the comparative coolness of the smoking room,
where, seating himself in that seductive invitation to laziness, a
leather-covered arm chair, he began to glance over the illustrated
English weeklies. He had the huge room to himself. These were business
hours, and a feeling of loneliness crept over him, perhaps germinated by
his sight of the illustrate