fortable home. The adventure offers too many dangers
for a woman. Read the inclosed. G."

The inclosed was a telegram from X., sent during the night, and
evidently just received at Headquarters. Its contents were certainly not
reassuring:

"Another person missing. Last seen in Lost Man's Lane. A
harmless lad known as Silly Rufus. What's to be done? Wire
orders. TROHM."

"Mr. Gryce bade me say that he would be up here some time before noon,"
said the man, seeing me look with some blankness at these words.

Nothing more was needed to restore my self-possession. Folding up the
letter, I put it in my bag.

"Say to Mr. Gryce from me that my intended visit cannot be postponed," I
replied. "I have telegraphed to my friends to expect me, and only a
great emergency would lead me to disappoint them. I will be glad to
receive Mr. Gryce on my return." And without further parley, I took my
bundles back from Lena, and proceeded at once to the carriage. Why
should I show any failure of courage at an event that was but a
repetition of the very ones which made my visit necessary? Was I a
likely person to fall victim to a mystery to which my eyes had been
opened? Had I not been sufficiently warned of the dangers of Lost Man's
Lane to keep myself at a respectable distance from the place of peril? I
was going to visit the children of my once devoted friend. If there were
perils of no ordinary nature to be encountered in so doing, was I not
all the more called upon to lend them the support of my presence?

Yes, Mr. Gryce, and nothing now should hold me back. I even felt an
increased desire to reach the scene of these mysteries, and chafed some
at the length of the journey, which was of a more tedious character than
I expected. A poor beginning for events requiring patience as well as
great moral courage; but I little knew what was before me, and only
considered that every moment spent on this hot and dusty train kept me
thus much longer from the embraces of Althea's children.

I recovered my equanimity, however, as we approached X. The scenery was
really beautiful, and the consciousness that I should soon alight at the
mountain station which had played a more or less serious part in Mr.
Gryce's narrative, awakened in me a pleasurable excitement which should
have been a sufficient warning to me that the spirit of investigation
which had led me so triumphantly through that affair next door had
seized me again in a