arrival. Further consultation developed that the use to which Number 3
had been put was known to but one of the maids, who could easily be
silenced. Whereupon Quimby told his scheme. Mrs. Quimby was satisfied,
and he and Jake prepared to carry it out.

The sensations of the next half-hour, as told by Jake, would make your
flesh creep. They did not dare to carry a lamp to light the gruesome
task, and well as they knew the way, the possibilities of a stumble or a
fall against some one of the many trees they had to pass filled them
with constant terror. They did stumble once, and the low cry Jake
uttered caused them new fears. Was that a window they heard flying up?
No; but something moved in the bushes. They were sure of this and
guiltily shook in their shoes; but nothing advanced out of the shadows,
and they went on.

But the worst was when they had to turn their backs upon the body left
lying face downward in the cold, damp woods. Men of no compassion,
unreached by ordinary sympathies, they felt the furtive skulking back,
step by step, along ways commonplace enough in the daytime, but begirt
with terrors now and full of demoniac suggestion.

The sight of a single thread of light marking the door left ajar for
them by Mrs. Quimby was a beacon of hope which was not even disturbed by
the sight of her wild figure walking in a circle round and round the
office, the stump of candle dripping unheeded over her fingers, and her
eyes almost as sightless as those of the form left in the woods.

"Susan!" exclaimed her husband, laying hand on her.

She paused at once. The presence of the two men had restored her
self-possession.

But all was not well yet. Jake drew Quimby's attention to the register
where the two names of mother and daughter could be seen in plain black
and white.

"Oh, that's nothing!" exclaimed the landlord, and, taking out his knife,
he ripped the leaf out, together with the corresponding one in the back.
"The devil's on our side all right, or why did she pass over the space
at the bottom of the page and write their two names at the top of the
next one?"

He started, for his wife had clutched his arm.

"Yes, the devil's on our side thus far," said she, "but here he stops. I
have just remembered something that will upset our whole plan and
possibly hang us. Miss Demarest visited her mother in Number 3 and
noticed the room well, and particularly the paper. Now if she is able to
describe that paper, it mi