e utmost and call perhaps for the use of the whistle
which I had received from Mr. Gryce, and which, following his
instructions, I had tied carefully about my neck. Yet how could I
associate Lucetta with crime, or dream of the police in connection with
the serene Loreen, whose every look was a rebuke to all that was false,
vile, or even common? Easily, my readers, easily, with that great,
hulking William in my remembrance. To shield _him_, to hide perhaps his
deformity of soul from the world, even such gentle and gracious women as
these have been known to enter into acts which to an unprejudiced eye
and an unbiased conscience would seem little short of fiendish. Love for
an unworthy relative, or rather the sense of duty toward those of one's
own blood, has driven many a clear-minded woman to her ruin, as may be
seen any day in the police annals.

I am quite aware that I have not as yet put into definite words the
suspicion upon which I was now prepared to work. Up to this time it had
been too vague, or rather of too monstrous a character for me not to
consider other theories, such as, for instance, the possible connection
of old Mother Jane with the unaccountable disappearances which had taken
place in this lane. But after this scene, the increased assurance I was
hourly receiving that something extraordinary and out of keeping with
the customary appearances of the household was secretly going on in some
one of the various chambers of that long corridor I had been prevented
from entering, forced me to accept and act upon the belief that these
young women held in charge a prisoner of some kind, of whose presence in
the house they dreaded the discovery.

Now, who could this prisoner be?

Common sense supplied me with but one answer; Silly Rufus, the boy who
within a few days had vanished from among the good people of this
seemingly guileless community.

This theory once established in my mind, I applied myself to a
consideration of the means at my disposal for determining its validity.
The simplest, surest, but least satisfactory to one of my nature was to
summon the police and have the house thoroughly searched, but this
involved, in case I had been deceived by appearances--as was possible
even to a woman of my experience and discrimination,--a scandal and an
opprobrium which I would be the last to inflict upon Althea's children,
unless justice to the rest of the world demanded it.

It was in consideration of this v