iscovered
that there was any one there on the path at all.

"I beg your pardon," began Mr. Hiram P. Jessop with his usual
politeness. "Could you inform us----"

The singing mermaid gave a little "ow" of consternation, and tossed back
some of the hair from her face.

It was a disappointing sight, rather, for what we saw was a round,
full-mooney, rather foolish face, with a large pink mouth, but no other
definite features. The eyes were pale blue, the cheeks were paler pink,
and the eyebrows and eyelashes looked as if they had been washed away in
a shower of rain.

Altogether, a thoroughly weird apparition it was who stared at us, and
giggled, and said, in a very Cockney accent: "Oh, good Gollywog! another
man! There's no getting away from them in this place this morning. And
there was I thinking I had found a quiet spot to dry my hair in!"

"I am very sorry to intrude," said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop in his most
courteous voice. "Could you inform me, Madam, if this is the house they
call The Refuge?"

"That's right," said the woman with the hair. And I found myself
suddenly wondering if she were the lady that those post-office girls had
nicknamed "Autumn Tints."

It was most appropriate, with those reds and golds and bronzes of the
hair that must have been sufficiently striking had it not been "treated"
with henna, as it had.

So I said eagerly, and without further preamble: "Oh, then, could you
tell me if Miss Million is here?"

"I couldn't, dear, really," said the woman, who looked all washed-out
excepting her hair. "There is such a lot of them that keep coming and
going here! Like a blessed beehive, isn't it? Bothered if I can keep
track of all their names!"

She paused a moment before she went on.

"Miss Million--now which would she be?"

I felt a chill of despair creeping over my heart.

What did she mean by saying that "so many of them" kept coming and going
in this place?

This, combined with the comments of those post-office girls at Lewes,
awoke in my mind one terrifying conclusion. This place with the peaceful
garden and the pretty name----! There was something uncanny about it....
This place was a lunatic asylum!

Yes, I did not see what else on earth it could possibly be! And then
this woman with the vacuous face and the wild hair, and still wilder
kind of attire, she, without doubt, was one of the patients!

What in the world was my poor little Million doing in this galley,
provided she was h