are a gentleman; have a chivalrous regard for the
ladies; do you think you could have brought yourself (even if in your
secret heart you considered some such result possible, which I am not
ready to say I did) to mention, at such a time as that, the receipt of
a letter complaining of the treatment received from one of Mr.
Leavenworth's nieces, as a suspicious circumstance worthy to be taken
into account by a coroner's jury?"

I shook my head. I could not but acknowledge the impossibility.

"What reason had I for thinking that letter was one of importance? I
knew of no Henry Ritchie Clavering."

"And yet you seemed to think it was. I remember you hesitated before
replying."

"It is true; but not as I should hesitate now, if the question were put
to me again."

Silence followed these words, during which I took two or three turns up
and down the room.

"This is all very fanciful," I remarked, laughing in the vain endeavor
to throw off the superstitious horror his words had awakened.

He bent his head in assent. "I know it," said he. "I am practical myself
in broad daylight, and recognize the nimsiness of an accusation based
upon a poor, hardworking secretary's dream, as plainly as you do. This
is the reason I desired to keep from speaking at all; but, Mr. Raymond,"
and his long, thin hand fell upon my arm with a nervous intensity which
gave me almost the sensation of an electrical shock, "if the murderer of
Mr. Leavenworth is ever brought to confess his deed, mark my words, he
will prove to be the man of my dream."

I drew a long breath. For a moment his belief was mine; and a mingled
sensation of relief and exquisite pain swept over me as I thought of the
possibility of Eleanore being exonerated from crime only to be plunged
into fresh humiliation and deeper abysses of suffering.

"He stalks the streets in freedom now," the secretary went on, as if to
himself; "even dares to enter the house he has so wofully desecrated;
but justice is justice and, sooner or later, something will transpire
which will prove to you that a premonition so wonderful as that
I received had its significance; that the voice calling 'Trueman,
Trueman,' was something more than the empty utterances of an excited
brain; that it was Justice itself, calling attention to the guilty."

I looked at him in wonder. Did he know that the officers of justice were
already upon the track of this same Clavering? I judged not from his
look, but felt an