ke his
indomitable master, possessed a great fund of energy and willpower.
He saw that if he was to save Abner Fairbrother (and now that Mrs.
Fairbrother was dead, his old master was all the world to him) he must
make Fairbrother's alibi good by carrying on the deception as planned
by the latter, and getting as soon as possible to his camp in the New
Mexico mountains. He knew that he would have strength to do this and he
went about it without sparing himself.

Making his way into the mountains, he found the guide and his horse at
the place agreed upon and, paying the guide enough for his services to
insure a quiet tongue, rode back toward El Moro where he was met and
sent on to Santa Fe as already related.

Such is the real explanation of the well-nigh unintelligible scrawl
found in Mrs. Fairbrother's hand after her death. As to the one which
left Miss Grey's bedside for this same house, it was, alike in the
writing and sending, the loving freak of a very sick but tender-hearted
girl. She had noted the look with which Mr. Grey had left her, and, in
her delirious state, thought that a line in her own hand would convince
him of her good condition and make it possible for him to enjoy the
evening. She was, however, too much afraid of her nurse to write it
openly, and though we never found that scrawl, it was doubtless not very
different in appearance from the one with which I had confounded it. The
man to whom it was intrusted stopped for too many warming drinks on his
way for it ever to reach Mr. Ramsdell's house. He did not even return
home that night, and when he did put in an appearance the next morning,
he was dismissed.

This takes me back to the ball and Mrs. Fairbrother. She had never had
much fear of her husband till she received his old servant's note in the
peculiar manner already mentioned. This, coming through the night and
the wet and with all the marks of hurry upon it, did impress her greatly
and led her to take the first means which offered of ridding herself of
her dangerous ornament. The story of this we know.

Meanwhile, a burning heart and a scheming brain were keeping up their
deadly work a few paces off under the impassive aspect and active
movements of the caterer's newly-hired waiter. Abner Fairbrother, whose
real character no one had ever been able to sound, unless it was the man
who had known him in his days of struggle, was one of those dangerous
men who can conceal under a still brow and a