e way to public necessity. In this case the
private grief developed a public necessity. Arthur took pains to tell
his story to the leaders. It gave point to the general onslaught now
being made on the Irish by the hired journals, the escaped nun, and, as
some named him, the escaped historian. A plan was formulated to deal
with all three. Grahame entered the lists against Bitterkin and
Smallish, Vandervelt denounced the _Confessions_ and its author at a
banquet _vis-a-vis_ with Bradford, and Monsignor pursued the escaped
historian by lecturing in the same cities, and often on the same
platform. Arthur held to Sister Claire as his specialty, as the hinge of
the Livingstone scheme, a very rotten hinge on which to depend.
Nevertheless, she kept her footing for months after her interview with
him.

Curran had laid bare her life and exposed her present methods nicely;
but neither afforded a grip which might shake her, except inasmuch as it
gave him an unexpected clue to the Claire labyrinth. Her history showed
that she had often played two parts in the same drama. Without doubt a
similar trick served her now, not only to indulge her riotous passions,
but to glean advantages from her enemies and useful criticism from her
friends. He cast about among his casual acquaintance for characters that
Claire might play. Edith Conyngham? Not impossible! The Brand who held
forth at the gospel hall? Here was a find indeed! Comparing the
impressions left upon him by these women, as a result he gave Curran the
commission to watch and study the daily living of Edith Conyngham. Even
this man's nerve shook at a stroke so luckily apt.

"I don't know much about the ways of escaped nuns," said Arthur, "but I
am going to study them. I'll wager you find Claire behind the rusty
garments of this obscure, muddy, slimy little woman. They have the same
appetite anyway."

This choice bit of news, carried at once to the escaped nun, sounded in
Sister Claire's ear like the crack of doom, and she stared at Curran,
standing humbly in her office, with distorted face.

"Is this the result of your clever story-telling, Dick Curran?" she
gasped.

"It's the result of your affair with young Everard," he replied sadly.
"That was a mistake altogether. It waked up Arthur Dillon."

"The mistake was to wake that man," she said sourly. "I fear him.
There's something hiding in him, something terrible, that looks out of
his eyes like a ghost in hell. The dogs ... J