nd with tails
intertwined, enclosed a monogram, apparently, but the letters were not
English in character, and so intermingled that none of the three could
separate them.

"I've seen that, or what's just like it," said Dan hurriedly. "It's
stamped on some papers he give me to keep once, when he was himself for
a few minutes. He said, if he died I might open 'em, and they'd secure
justice. He didn't say justice to who. Then he went off again, mumbling
and muttering. I never could find out just what he wanted me to do with
'em."

"We'll look into that," said Dalton, who had his own ideas concerning
the dead man. "We can't do any more here, doctor?"

"No. I'll turn him over to these boys, now. They know what to do; and
I've got to go back to Jim Dodge's to-night. His little girl's down with
measles--severe case."

Dalton busied himself for a few moments with Murfree's effects, then,
beckoning Dan, they went back into the lad's room at the rear.

"I wish you'd let me see those papers," said Dalton, in his
authoritative voice, and soon the two were pouring over a small book,
written full; a document or two on parchment; a badge, in which the
letters and the twisted serpents were wrought out of gun-metal into a
cheap-looking pin; and several letters. Neither said much as they passed
these from hand to hand, Dalton fully recognizing the right of his
workman to know the full contents of what had been left in his care; the
other never questioning the manager's interest and concern in all
matters pertaining to his employees. As Dalton rose to go, he said:

"My boy, you fully understand the importance of keeping this to
yourself, till we need it in evidence?"

"Yes, sir; I do."

"Well, I know you are to be trusted. Put them in some safe place, under
lock and key, and wait till I give you the word. Good-night."

He went out the back way, though the crowd was mostly dispersed now,
and, as he gained the street, glanced over toward the park. At its other
end a light still gleamed in an upper window of the pretty house, and he
hoped it was Joyce's window, for he was in that romantic stage, never
fully explained by the psychologists, where every inanimate thing
becomes interesting just in proportion to the nearness of its connection
with one person--oftentimes a very ordinary young person to outsiders.

It was decidedly out of his way, but he plunged into the park shadows,
and hastened through it, then stood in the narrow st