for a stroll
down to the Pilgrim's Pond an hour before, and could not be traced
since. Then Todd cried 'Mighty Murder!' and shut down the window
violently; and I could hear him plunging down the stairs inside.
Repossessing myself of my former and wiser purpose, I whipped out of the
way of the general search that must follow; and returned here not later
than eight o'clock.

"I now ask you to recall that little Society paragraph which seemed to
you so painfully lacking in interest. If the convict was not keeping
the shot for Todd, as he evidently wasn't, it is most likely that he was
keeping it for Lord Falconroy; and it looks as if he had delivered the
goods. No more handy place to shoot a man than in the curious geological
surroundings of that pool, where a body thrown down would sink through
thick slime to a depth practically unknown. Let us suppose, then, that
our friend with the cropped hair came to kill Falconroy and not Todd.
But, as I have pointed out, there are many reasons why people in America
might want to kill Todd. There is no reason why anybody in America
should want to kill an English lord newly landed, except for the
one reason mentioned in the pink paper--that the lord is paying his
attentions to the millionaire's daughter. Our crop-haired friend,
despite his ill-fitting clothes, must be an aspiring lover.

"I know the notion will seem to you jarring and even comic; but that's
because you are English. It sounds to you like saying the Archbishop of
Canterbury's daughter will be married in St George's, Hanover Square,
to a crossing-sweeper on ticket-of-leave. You don't do justice to the
climbing and aspiring power of our more remarkable citizens. You see a
good-looking grey-haired man in evening-dress with a sort of authority
about him, you know he is a pillar of the State, and you fancy he had
a father. You are in error. You do not realize that a comparatively few
years ago he may have been in a tenement or (quite likely) in a jail.
You don't allow for our national buoyancy and uplift. Many of our
most influential citizens have not only risen recently, but risen
comparatively late in life. Todd's daughter was fully eighteen when her
father first made his pile; so there isn't really anything impossible in
her having a hanger-on in low life; or even in her hanging on to him, as
I think she must be doing, to judge by the lantern business. If so, the
hand that held the lantern may not be unconnected with th