an obstinate silence.

The girl puzzled me strangely. At times it almost seemed as though she
were being forced against her will to take part in some business that
she thoroughly disliked; but then the obvious way in which the two
men trusted her scarcely bore out this idea. She showed no particular
affection for her father, and it was plain that she detested
McMurtrie, yet there was evidently some bond between them strong
enough to keep all three together.

To me she behaved from the first with a sort of sullen friendliness.
She would come and sit in my room, and with her chin resting on her
hand and her big dark eyes fixed on mine, she would ask me questions
about myself or listen to the stories I told her of the prison. Once,
when I had been describing some peculiarly mean little persecution
which one of the warders (who objected on principle to what he called
"gen'lemen lags") had amused himself by practising on me, she had
jumped up and with a quick, almost savage gesture, laid her hand on my
arm.

"Never mind," she said; "it's over now, and you shall make them pay
for what they have done to you. We can promise you that at least," and
she laughed with a curious bitterness I failed to understand.

Of the mysterious Mr. Hoffman, who had turned up at the house on the
second day after my arrival, I saw or heard nothing more. I asked
Sonia about him one day, but she only replied curtly that he was a
business friend of the doctor's, and with this meagre information I
had to remain content.

The point that I felt perhaps most inquisitive about was whom
McMurtrie could have mistaken me for when I had crawled in through the
kitchen window. I had a distinct recollection of his having mentioned
some name just before I had collapsed, but it had gone out of my head
and for the life of me I couldn't recall it. You know the maddening
way a name will hang about the tip of one's tongue, just avoiding
every effort at recapture.

Apart from my talks with Sonia, my chief entertainment was reading the
_Daily Mail_. Not a day passed but some one seemed to discover a fresh
clue to my hiding-place. I was seen and recognized at Manchester,
Yarmouth, London, and Edinburgh; while one gentleman wrote to inform
the editor he had trustworthy information I was actually in St.
Petersburg, having been engaged by the Russian Government to effect
certain improvements in their torpedo service. All this was quite
pleasing, for, in addition to