The Chapters

Robert offered his arm with an alacrity which Madame Ratignolle accepted, though she had little need of it now that she was once more upon the firm sand. The children and the nurse-maids went before them. Mrs. Pontellier had seated herself beneath the tent, where Raoul was filling his hands with sand and scattering it with grave deliberation over the bare feet of his brother.

“You have been very wicked to escape us,” Robert said, looking back at the women. “We hunted for you everywhere.”

“You hunted long enough to find us,” returned Madame Ratignolle. “That is all one may expect of a hunter in this heat.”

“I would have found Mrs. Pontellier sooner if she had wished to be found.”

“She did not wish it, perhaps.”

“No,” he answered, smiling; “she has a way of looking as if she had gone very far away, even when she is sitting beside one.”

Madame Ratignolle glanced at him with the quick, soft attention which she gave to things that touched her fancy. “And does that trouble you?”

“It makes one want to follow,” he said simply.

She laughed a little, and complained again of her stiff knees. Robert adapted his step to hers, and they went slowly toward the Lebrun house, while the children, released from restraint, ran in and out of the hot, white light that lay upon the path.

Mrs. Pontellier remained at the beach until the younger boy began to cry for his dinner. She took them both by the hand and followed at leisure. The sun seemed to have drawn nearer to the earth. It pressed upon her head and shoulders, and the air had the thickness and weight of a warm, transparent veil. Yet she did not suffer from the heat. There was something agreeable in yielding herself to it, in moving beneath it as one might move under water.

At the house the noonday meal was nearly over. Madame Lebrun, seated at the head of the table, was recounting some incident of a former summer, and several voices rose and fell about her in lazy accompaniment. The lady in black was there, eating almost nothing, as usual, and listening with an air of detached submission. She wore the same severe garment which had seemed to Edna a part of the woman’s personality, like the thin, brown hands and the pale, patient face.

When the meal was ended, a boy brought a telegram which had been sent over from the landing. Madame Lebrun took it, looked at the address, and passed it to Mrs. Pontellier.

Edna opened it without haste. It was from Léonce.

“Detained by important business. Cannot come to Grand Isle this week-end. All well. Write if anything wanted. Léonce.”

She read it twice. The words were sufficiently kind, and carried with them no suggestion of impatience or neglect. Nevertheless they had an odd effect upon her. She had expected him, she supposed; or had expected to expect him. Her first sensation was one of blankness, followed almost immediately by a lightness which she did not attempt to explain.

“Nothing wrong, I hope?” asked Madame Lebrun.

“No; Monsieur Pontellier is detained in the city.”

“Ah, those men! They are slaves to their affairs.” Madame Lebrun sighed indulgently. “You will be lonely, my dear.”

“I do not think so,” said Edna.

Robert, who had been standing near the door, glanced toward her. She did not look at him. Folding the telegram, she placed it in the little pocket of her dress.

The afternoon moved with its accustomed quietness. The children slept, and the nurse sat upon the back gallery with a fan in her lap, watching the flies settle and rise again upon the railing. A number of the guests had gone to their rooms. Others had sought the shade of the main house, where Madame Lebrun’s sewing-machine gave out its industrious, intermittent clatter.

Edna sat for a while near a window in her cottage, with a book open before her. She could not read. The page seemed to grow white and luminous under her eyes; the printed words detached themselves and floated away. At last she rose and went out.

Madame Ratignolle was coming across the yard, protected from the sun by her great white umbrella. She had changed her dress, and the fresh ribbons at her throat gave her an appearance of having just emerged from some fragrant and sheltered place.

“I have come to see if you are ill,” she announced. “You looked so strange at dinner.”

“I am not ill.”

“Then you are glad Monsieur Pontellier is not coming.”

Edna laughed, but not with embarrassment. “Must one be either glad or sorry? I think I am neither.”

Madame Ratignolle seated herself, and began at once to draw the needlework from her pocket. “Robert said a droll thing this morning as we walked home. He said that when you sit quiet and look at the water, you seem to have gone very far away, and that it makes one want to follow you.”

Edna’s hand, which rested upon the back of a chair, tightened a little. She looked out toward the low line of the sea, visible between the cottages and the sparse trees.

“And what did you say?” she asked.

“I asked him if it troubled him. He said no; but I think it did.”

“Why should it?”

“Ah, *ma chère,* how should I know?” Madame Ratignolle smiled, not archly, but with the abundant good-humor which made her smile so beautiful. “Men are strange when they are young. Robert is always saying something. He says it because he likes the sound of his own voice.”

Edna made no reply. The words had not seemed foolish when Madame Ratignolle repeated them. They had taken a place in her mind with a distinctness out of proportion to their meaning, as a small shell may lie clear and perfect at the bottom of water.

After a little while Madame Ratignolle went away, having promised to bring the children over in the evening if they were not too tired. Edna remained upon the porch until the shadows of the orange-trees began to lengthen. Then she put on her hat and went down toward the beach.

She did not take the path by which the bath-houses stood most thickly. There was a quieter stretch beyond them, where the shore curved and the water lay broken with little crests of white. A few bathers were at a distance; their voices came faintly to her, mingled with the continuous, solemn murmur of the waves.

She entered the water without looking behind her. It was warm about her ankles, her knees, her waist; then it clasped her body, and the coolness of it passed over her with a sudden sweetness. She had often gone into the sea with the others, laughing and crying out, clinging to a hand that was offered her, struggling helplessly when the water lifted her feet from the ground. That afternoon she moved farther out until the bottom was uncertain beneath her.

She remembered what Robert had said, one day, about lying straight and trusting the water. She did not trust it. She thrust her arms forward, struck downward with them, and felt herself sink with a terror that caught at her throat. Her feet touched the sand. She stood still, breathing quickly, while a little wave broke against her shoulders.

Then, without reason, she tried again.

This time she moved her arms as she had seen the others move them, awkwardly and with a painful consciousness of each separate effort. The water received her. For an instant she was borne forward; then for another instant, and another. She had made perhaps three strokes before fear seized her and she stood upright, startled and triumphant.

No one had seen. A woman farther down the shore was fastening a child’s cap; two men were talking in the shallow water, with their backs turned. Edna looked about, almost offended that there had been no witness to the event. Yet she was glad of it. She went out again, and repeated the effort. The distance was no greater than the length of a room, but it had opened before her with an immense suggestion of space.

When she came at last to the beach, the lady in black was sitting upon the lower step of her bath-house. Her prayer-book lay closed upon her lap. Edna had never heard her speak except in response to some question addressed directly to her.

“You have been in the water a long time, Mrs. Pontellier,” she said.

Her voice was low and gentle, with a tired quality that made Edna turn and look at her.

“I did not know it,” Edna answered. “The water is pleasant this afternoon.”

“Yes.” The lady in black looked out across the sea. “It is pleasant when one has forgotten to be afraid of it.”

Edna was silent.

“My husband used to say that the sea was never the same twice,” the woman continued, as if speaking to herself. “I have found that it is always the same when one is lonely.”

She took up her prayer-book and rose. “Good evening, Mrs. Pontellier.”

“Good evening,” said Edna.

The lady in black went slowly away, her black skirts brushing the sand. Edna watched her until she had passed beyond the row of bath-houses. Then she went into her own compartment, dried herself, and dressed with unusual care, though there was no one to see her except the children and the nurse.

At dinner she was quiet. Robert was there, telling some story which caused Madame Lebrun and the others to laugh. Once he looked toward Edna, but she was speaking to Raoul, who had awakened cross and hungry from his sleep. The evening brought the customary gathering upon the gallery of the main house. There was music for a time, and then conversation, and the children, restored to happiness, played at the edge of the lamp-light.

Edna sat among them, but she did not feel herself a part of them. The telegram lay in her pocket. The sea had entered her ears and would not leave them; she heard it beneath the voices, beneath the music, beneath the small cries and laughter of the children.

Later, when the nurse had put the boys to bed and the house had grown still, Edna went out alone upon the gallery of the cottage. The night was warm and dim. She could see no water, but she knew where it lay, stretching beyond the darkness.

The children slept within. Somewhere at the main house a chair was moved, and then all was quiet again. Edna rested her arms upon the railing and stood motionless. Robert’s remark, as Madame Ratignolle had repeated it, lingered in her mind: that she seemed to have gone very far away, and that it made one want to follow.

Lady Russell’s advice had the advantage of being given with an earnestness which could not be mistaken, and with a degree of consideration for Sir Walter’s feelings, which made it, in her own opinion, almost impossible that it should offend. She had known him too long to expect that reason alone would have any effect where his personal consequence was concerned; but she trusted that affection for his children, regard for his name, and a little of that prudence which he sometimes professed, might be brought to act together.

They were assembled in the little drawing-room; Sir Walter, with the Baronetage closed, but still beneath his hand; Elizabeth at the work-table, though no work was going forward; Mr Shepherd in a chair somewhat apart, looking as if he had come prepared to agree with every body, and Anne near the window, sufficiently withdrawn from the council to be forgotten by all except Lady Russell.

“My dear Sir Walter,” said Lady Russell, “you have done me the honour of consulting me, and I must speak as your friend. I cannot flatter myself that what I have to recommend will be agreeable; but a few years of real attention, a decided diminution of expense, and a resolution against every unnecessary indulgence, would, I am persuaded, place your affairs in a situation of safety.”

Sir Walter made a motion of impatience.

“Lady Russell,” said he, “you are a most excellent woman; nobody can value your friendship more highly than I do; but I believe you will find that no family in England has been managed with greater propriety than mine. Whatever may have been represented to you by Mr Shepherd, I have done nothing which the situation of the Elliots did not require.”

Mr Shepherd bowed, as if his information had been most reluctantly bestowed.

“I make no accusation,” replied Lady Russell. “I only entreat you to consider what may now be done. There are establishments which might be reduced; servants, perhaps, who are retained rather from habit than necessity; the carriage—”

“The carriage!” cried Sir Walter. “My dear Lady Russell, can you seriously be speaking of the carriage? Shall Sir Walter Elliot go about the country in a vehicle which would disgrace a tradesman?”

“No one proposes any thing of that sort,” said she, calmly. “But the number of horses—”

“Not another word,” said he. “The Kellynch carriage is known in every part of Somersetshire. It is not a thing to be altered at the pleasure of an accountant.”

Lady Russell coloured a little, but persevered. “Then let the economy begin elsewhere. The table may be simplified; the house need not be open in the manner it has been; the London establishment may be curtailed; and I cannot but think that, if Miss Elliot would consent—”

Elizabeth lifted her eyes with dignity.

“—if Miss Elliot would consent,” continued Lady Russell, “to fewer expenses in dress and company for a time, much might be accomplished without any real sacrifice of comfort.”

Elizabeth received this with a cold civility. “I am quite willing, Lady Russell, to do every thing which can be required of me. But I should hope I am not to be called on to make Kellynch Hall appear neglected, or its mistress mean.”

“Certainly not,” said Sir Walter, with warmth. “Elizabeth understands what is due to herself and to me. No, Lady Russell; I am obliged to you, but your plan will not do. To lessen the style of living at Kellynch would be to lessen the respectability of the family. The thing is impossible.”

Lady Russell was silent. She had not expected success, but she had hoped for less immediate and less complete rejection.

Mr Shepherd, who had listened with the attention of one whose business it was to hear a great deal which he must not approve, now thought it proper to advance his own scheme. He had papers in his hand, which he opened with much formality, and after observing that his opinion was of infinitely less value than Lady Russell’s, began with an account of certain sums which might be saved by the immediate payment of some debts, the consolidation of others, and a stricter arrangement respecting the rents and repairs of the estate.

Sir Walter heard him for a few minutes with tolerable patience; but when Mr Shepherd proceeded to mention a proposed reduction in the number of gardeners, and suggested that the hothouses might be maintained at a less considerable charge, his countenance changed.

“You surprise me, Shepherd,” said he. “Do you imagine that I am to deprive Kellynch of its appearance? Are my grounds to be suffered to run wild, and my conservatory to be without flowers, because a few bills have been made troublesome?”

“By no means, Sir Walter,” answered Mr Shepherd, hastily. “I should be the last person in the world to recommend any measure derogatory to the character of the place. But there are flowers which—”

“Flowers!” repeated Sir Walter. “You talk of flowers as if they were cabbages.”

Mr Shepherd smiled with submission.

“And as to servants,” continued Sir Walter, “I will have no dismissal of old and faithful people. It would be a most unfeeling proceeding. Mrs Clay herself would be shocked at it.”

Elizabeth, who had lately been much disposed to find amusement in Mrs Clay’s society, looked gratified by this proof of attention to her companion’s sentiments; though Mrs Clay was not present to enjoy it.

Mr Shepherd attempted to explain that he had not wished any old servant to be dismissed, but only that vacancies should not be filled, and that some offices might be united. This amendment was received almost as ill as the original proposal.

“United!” said Sir Walter. “It is a word I cannot bear. The offices at Kellynch have always been distinct, and so they shall remain. I have no notion of a housekeeper attending to matters out of her province, or of a butler doing the work of a footman. It would be the beginning of disorder.”

“Then I fear,” said Mr Shepherd, shutting his papers, “that my plan is not fortunate enough to meet Sir Walter’s approbation.”

“It is not,” replied Sir Walter, with a composure which shewed how little he thought himself to blame. “It is wholly inadequate to the case, besides being objectionable in every particular. I expected, Shepherd, something more worthy of your professional experience.”

The agent looked for a moment as if he had no answer ready; but he recovered himself, and bowed. Lady Russell’s concern was greater. She had seen enough to understand that neither reason, friendship, nor the clearest representation of danger, would induce Sir Walter to relinquish any article which he chose to call necessary; and she began to fear that the embarrassments, which had hitherto been only mortifying, must soon become serious.

Anne had sat very still. Her mind had been employed, not in wondering at her father’s resistance, for that was too familiar to excite surprise, but in considering whether any plan could be offered which had not the immediate appearance of personal degradation. She had long been convinced that a large and steady reduction was indispensable; and the more she had heard, the more certain had she become that partial expedients were worse than useless. She did not often speak in family consultations. Her opinion was seldom asked, and still more seldom attended to; but Lady Russell’s anxious look, and the hopelessness of the discussion, gave her courage.

“If economy is to be of any use,” said Anne, “it must be more than economy in trifles.”

Every eye was turned towards her. Sir Walter looked astonished; Elizabeth, who had been arranging a ribbon, stopped with it in her hand.

“I think,” continued Anne, “that there must be a fixed sum determined on, and that every expense must be brought within it. The house must be conducted on a smaller scale; the number of servants reduced by degrees as opportunities occur; the horses lessened; the table simplified; and no money expended on improvements, purchases, or company, which is not absolutely necessary. We must not attempt to preserve all the appearance of our former manner of living, if that manner cannot be afforded.”

Sir Walter’s first expression was one of affront; but Anne had spoken with such quietness, and with so little of the authority which he most disliked in advice, that he did not immediately interrupt her.

“We ought,” she went on, “to know precisely what is owed, and to pay it by a regular plan. If there is any sacrifice which must be made, it should be made willingly and at once, rather than let the same anxiety return every month.”

“Upon my word, Anne,” said Sir Walter, “you have formed a very pretty scheme for making us miserable. I dare say it is what young ladies learn from novels and sermons. But you can know nothing of the demands upon a person in my situation.”

“I know only that debts must be paid,” answered Anne, blushing a little, but not withdrawing what she had said.

Then occurred what no one had expected. Elizabeth spoke.

“Anne is right,” said she. “At least, she is right in this, that nothing can be done by cutting off a charity here, and a pair of curtains there. If we are to suffer at all, I would rather know the worst of it. It is excessively unpleasant; but I see no dignity in pretending that we can go on as we have done, when we cannot.”

Sir Walter turned towards her in still greater astonishment than he had shewn at Anne.

“My dear Elizabeth!”

“I do not mean,” said Elizabeth, “that Kellynch is to be disgraced. I could not bear that. But we may be less extravagant without being ridiculous. We need not have every body here; we need not renew every thing because it has been used one season; and surely the servants can be arranged without making the house look like a farmhouse.”

Mr Shepherd, whose spirits rose at this unexpected alliance, looked from one sister to the other with much satisfaction. Lady Russell’s countenance brightened; for though Elizabeth’s support was given more from alarm than principle, it was support, and might do more than Anne’s better reason.

Sir Walter, however, was not softened.

“You are both determined, I perceive,” said he, “to make me the most unfortunate man in England. I have a daughter who would put me on short commons, and another who would have me surrounded by nobody but people in aprons. I cannot consent to any such proceedings.”

“Sir Walter,” said Mr Shepherd, with a caution which had rather increased than diminished during the morning, “there is one other consideration, which, perhaps, I ought to mention. It is a measure which I would not presume to name, if I did not think it deserved to be weighed. The Hall, you know, is a very desirable residence. There might be persons—persons of the highest respectability—who would be glad to take it for a term.”

Sir Walter stared at him.

“To take Kellynch Hall?” said he slowly.

“To occupy it, Sir Walter, for a limited period; under the most proper restrictions; and at a rent which would be of very material service. You would, of course, retain every right—”

“Rent!” exclaimed Sir Walter. “And who, pray, is to pay rent to me?”

Mr Shepherd had the uncomfortable appearance of a man who found it impossible to retreat, but who would have given much to be safely out of the room.

“A tenant, Sir Walter,” said he.

The word had scarcely passed his lips before Sir Walter rose.

“Never again,” said he, with great solemnity, “let me hear that word in my presence. A tenant! Kellynch Hall to be occupied by a tenant! Shepherd, you must be mad. I should be supposed to have failed in every duty belonging to my station. I should be talked of in every house in the county. No; the Hall has belonged to the Elliots for generations; it shall not be given up to the caprice or convenience of any stranger.”

“It need not be given up,” said Lady Russell, gently.

“Lady Russell, I beg you will not press it. I will hear no more. The very idea is an insult to the family.”

He walked to the window, and stood there for some time, as if the prospect of his own grounds were necessary to restore him to composure. Elizabeth had turned pale; for the proposal, however shocking in expression, had struck upon her mind with a force which she could not entirely resist. Anne saw it, and saw too that Mr Shepherd had not advanced the suggestion without previous reflection. Yet there was nothing to be said. Sir Walter’s resolution had the hardness of a resolution which was founded on vanity alone; and it was useless to attack it at present.

The conversation could not be revived. Lady Russell soon rose to go, having promised only to consider whether any other arrangement might be suggested. Mr Shepherd remained, because business required it; but he remained in an atmosphere where business could not prosper. Sir Walter resumed his seat, took up the Baronetage, and opened it at his own page, with an air which seemed to say that every difficulty must disappear before the contemplation of such claims.

In the midst of this occupation, a servant entered with a letter for Miss Anne.

“It is from Uppercross, ma’am,” said he.

Anne knew the hand immediately. It was Mary’s, large, unequal, and impatient; and before she had broken the seal, she was prepared for complaint. Mary’s letters seldom contained any other subject, except an account of some suffering which no one had sufficiently pitied, some slight which no one had intended, or some domestic disturbance which must be immediately repaired by Anne’s presence.

She read it quietly; but Lady Russell, who was still standing near her, saw a change in her face.

“Is any thing the matter, my dear?” said she.

“Mary has been unwell,” replied Anne. “Or believes herself so. She says Charles has been out all day, that the children are troublesome, and that nobody considers her. She wishes me to come to Uppercross directly, if I can.”

“Directly!” repeated Elizabeth, with a little laugh. “Mary always wishes every body to go directly.”

“She is really ill, perhaps,” said Anne.

“Mary is always ill when she has nobody to amuse her,” returned Elizabeth. “I cannot imagine what she wants with you. Mrs Musgrove has a house full of daughters, and Charles Musgrove has every possible means of procuring attendance.”

“But she has asked for Anne,” said Lady Russell, kindly; “and if she thinks her sister would be of comfort to her, I hope Anne will go.”

Sir Walter had listened with little attention, till the name of Uppercross was repeated. “Anne may do as she likes,” said he. “It can make no difference to me. Only let her not suppose that I can spare a carriage for such an expedition. The horses have been out already.”

“I shall not want it,” said Anne. “I can walk, if the weather remains fair.”

“Walk!” said Sir Walter, turning from his book. “To Uppercross! Surely there must be a chaise to be had.”

“There is no occasion,” replied Anne. “It is not three miles.”

Mr Shepherd, eager to be useful in a matter where usefulness could not offend, offered to send his own little carriage; but Anne declined it, with thanks. She had made up her mind to go in the morning. Mary’s wants were often unreasonable, but her loneliness was real enough; and Anne, whose habits of usefulness had taught her to be ready wherever she was wanted, could not refuse her.

Lady Russell pressed her hand before leaving the room, and looked at her with an affection which supplied the place of many words. “You will write to me, Anne.”

“Yes.”

When they were gone, and Mr Shepherd at last had been dismissed with directions to call again on the morrow, Sir Walter and Elizabeth remained for some time in a silence which was less peaceful than either would have wished it to appear. The accounts lay unopened upon the table. No plan had been adopted; no expense was reduced; and the one proposal which had promised immediate relief had been rejected with indignation.

Anne went to her own room before dinner. There, with Mary’s letter before her, she considered the prospect of the next day. Uppercross was not a place where she expected much happiness; Mary would be restless, Charles perhaps absent, and the children noisy. But she should be of use, and she should be away from the fruitless mortification of discussions which could end in nothing.

In the evening, after the lamps were lighted, she sat alone for a while by the window of the little room which had long been more her own than any other in the house. The grounds lay dark and still before her. From below came at intervals the sound of her father’s voice, and Elizabeth’s; but she distinguished no words. The debts remained as they had been; perhaps heavier, from being more fully known. Nothing had been settled, except her own departure.

She folded Mary’s letter, and placed it in her desk. She would go to Uppercross in the morning.

The next thing that happened was, that Mr. Franklin, having hugged me, took me by both shoulders, and held me away from him at arm’s length.

“Upon my word,” says he, “you are as sound as a nut! The years have made a venerable gentleman of you, Betteredge—but they haven’t made an old man of you yet.”

“They have done their best, sir,” I answered. “And I have helped them, since I was last troubled with your company.”

“Very likely,” says Mr. Franklin. “You were always devoted to helping Time in its work. What is the present hour?”

“Just gone two, sir.”

“And I was not expected till six?”

“Not before, sir.”

“That is the reason why I have surprised you. I got a letter in London, yesterday afternoon; and, as you will presently see, it put me in a hurry.”

He had a light travelling-bag with him, which I had not noticed before. It lay on the sand at his feet. Mr. Franklin opened it, and took out a letter in a large yellowish envelope, which had been folded and unfolded so often that it looked as if it had been through a lawsuit already.

“Read that,” says he. “You know everybody concerned, and you are the oldest friend I have in the world.”

I put on my spectacles. The letter was directed to Mr. Franklin Blake, at his rooms in London; and it ran in these words:—

“My dear Franklin,—If this reaches you in time, make what arrangement you please with your engagements, and come to Yorkshire by the first train you can catch. Do not be alarmed. Nothing has happened to your aunt or to Rachel. I write on a matter which is serious enough in its way, but which can wait until you are safely under Lady Verinder’s roof.

“You will find, enclosed with this, a packet addressed to yourself. Keep it in your own possession until you have seen your aunt. I particularly desire that no allusion may be made to your Uncle John Herncastle, either in writing or in conversation, before you have received Lady Verinder’s permission to speak.

“This request is made for reasons which I shall explain when we meet. Pray believe that I should not have troubled you in this manner if I could have avoided it.

“Your affectionate cousin, “George Bartram.”

Now, this letter wanted explaining in more directions than one. In the first place, Mr. George Bartram, whose name was at the bottom of it, was a gentleman whom I remembered perfectly well, though I had not seen him since my master’s time. He was related to my lady, I need hardly say how, and was, in his own person, one of those good-humoured, careless men who never seem to have anything to do in the world, and who nevertheless contrive to be always doing something inconvenient to somebody else. In the second place, I remembered that he had been on terms with Mr. John Herncastle which no decent man, in my opinion, could have held for five minutes. And, in the third place, the request about keeping quiet under my lady’s roof had an ugly sound in it, however softly it might be put.

“Has Mr. Bartram come here?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” says Mr. Franklin. “The letter was brought to me by a servant at my lodgings. I questioned the man; but he knew nothing, except that the letter had been left at the door. There was an inner envelope with it, as George says. That is in my possession.”

“What is in it, sir?” I asked.

Mr. Franklin looked at me, smiled, and shook his head.

“I haven’t opened it.”

“Not opened it?” says I.

“Not opened it,” says he. “I was told to keep it until I had seen my aunt; and I have obeyed my instructions, for once in my life.”

This was one of the little foreign ways of Mr. Franklin’s. He liked obedience, provided he was under no necessity of practising it; and he liked secrets, provided they belonged to somebody else. I had no more notion than you have, reader, what might be in the inner envelope. But I had a notion—which was worse than knowledge—that we had got somehow into the neighbourhood of Mr. John Herncastle, and of the wicked old Colonel’s birthday present to Miss Rachel.

“You came four hours before your time,” I said, “because of this letter?”

“Because of the letter; and because I was tired of London,” says Mr. Franklin. “I caught the earliest train, and hired a trap at the station. On my way to the house, the driver told me of a short cut by the sands. I gave him my bag, and sent him round with it. Then I heard somebody calling my name—or thought I did—and here I am.”

“You heard me, sir,” I said. “I was returning your call.”

“Then I was right,” says Mr. Franklin. “The advantage of foreign education, Betteredge, is that it teaches a man to trust his ear where his common sense would fail him.”

“It has taught you a good many other things besides,” I answered, “which I have no desire to hear of.”

He laughed, as young gentlemen will laugh at their elders when the elders have made a hit; and then he took out a little packet, wrapped in stout brown paper, and secured with red wax. It was no bigger than an ordinary letter, but thicker. On the outside was written, in a hand which I did not recognise,—

“For Mr. Franklin Blake. To be kept unopened until delivered according to instructions.”

“Now, Betteredge,” says Mr. Franklin, “you are the man I want.”

“I am generally the man that everybody wants,” I said. “What am I wanted for this time?”

“To take charge of this packet until to-morrow morning.”

“You have got pockets, sir,” I reminded him.

“Not pockets which I consider safe enough for it,” says he. “I have got to dress, to see my aunt, to meet half the people in the county, perhaps—and I don’t choose to carry the thing about me. You have a plate-room here, I know, with a lock that would discourage a burglar.”

“It would discourage two burglars,” I said.

“Put this inside it, then, if you please. Lock it up; keep the key yourself; and give it to nobody, except to me, when I ask you for it to-morrow.”

“You are certain, sir, that you have no objection to tell me what it contains?”

“Perfectly certain,” says Mr. Franklin. “My objection is, that I don’t know.”

He said this seriously enough; and the packet, for all its harmless look, gave me an uncomfortable feeling in my hand. A sealed thing is a trying possession to a man of naturally inquisitive mind. There is no knowing where the responsibility of it begins and ends. Still, when a gentleman who has been known to you from a boy puts a packet into your keeping, there is only one answer which any respectable old servant can make.

“I will lock it up, sir,” I said, “and I will answer for it as if it was my own.”

“Thank you, Betteredge,” says he. “You are a treasure.”

“No, sir,” I answered. “I am a servant. And if you have had enough of the sands, dinner has been waiting for some time.”

At that, Mr. Franklin looked round him; and I observed a change in his face.

“Where is the odd girl?” he asked.

“Rosanna?” says I.

“Rosanna,” says he. “That was her name, was it?”

“She is our second housemaid,” I informed him. “She had come out here for the air, and she went in before you spoke to me.”

“I hope I did not frighten her,” says he.

“You frightened her, sir?” I repeated. “Why should you frighten her?”

“Why, indeed?” says Mr. Franklin, with his careless smile. “I suppose she took me for a ghost in a fawn-coloured suit.”

“Ghosts wear black in Yorkshire,” I said. “And they don’t put roses in their button-holes.”

We started for the house. Mr. Franklin walked quickly; and, whenever I got behind, he turned back with a word of apology, and waited for me. This showed his good breeding, I dare say. But it also showed that he had forgotten the letter in his pocket, the packet in my hand, and the girl on the sands, almost as soon as he had seen them. Young gentlemen have short memories in some directions, and long memories in others. I have noticed that they remember an invitation to dinner better than a promise to be punctual at breakfast.

We had got no farther than the plantation, when my daughter Penelope came flying through the fir-trees, with her cap on one side and a face in a flutter.

“Father!” says she. “Where have you been?”

“At the sands,” I said. “What is the matter?”

“Rosanna has not come back,” says Penelope. “Nancy says she saw her cross the path below the kitchen garden, walking towards Cobb’s Hole.”

“Towards Cobb’s Hole?” I said.

“Yes. And she had not her work-bag with her. She had only her cloak on, and her bonnet.”

This news did not please me. Rosanna’s friend at Cobb’s Hole was a poor woman named Lucy Yolland—widow of a fisherman, and lodged in one of the cottages by the harbour. The girl had known her before she came to us; and, having once been kind to Rosanna in bad days, Mrs. Yolland was the sort of friend who is never forgotten by a woman with a grateful heart. But Cobb’s Hole was a good two miles away; the road to it was rough; and Rosanna, as I have mentioned already, had been fainting that morning.

“Did you see her yourself?” I asked Penelope.

“No, father. Nancy saw her.”

“Then Nancy may have seen a milkmaid, and called her Rosanna,” I said.

“It was Rosanna,” says Penelope. “She had the grey cloak on.”

“Very well,” I answered. “She has gone to see Mrs. Yolland, and she will come back when she is ready.”

Penelope looked at me doubtfully.

“She was crying when I spoke to her this morning,” says my daughter. “And she has been strange all day.”

“Women are always strange,” I said. “It is their way of keeping men humble.”

Mr. Franklin, who had been listening, asked if anything could be done.

“Nothing, sir,” I said. “The girl has gone of her own free will, and she knows the road. You had better get in to my lady.”

So we went on; Penelope walking with us as far as the house, and looking back once or twice towards the path that led to Cobb’s Hole. I did not like that looking back; but I said nothing. If you begin to make a mystery out of every young woman who takes a walk, you will never get your dinner in peace.

At the servants’ entrance, I took the packet from my pocket, having carried it there with one hand pressed over it the whole way. Mr. Franklin saw what I was doing and smiled again.

“You needn’t be afraid of losing it, Betteredge,” says he.

“I am not afraid of losing it,” I answered. “I am afraid of having it.”

He laughed at that, and went into the house by the front way, to announce himself to my lady. Penelope followed into the servants’ hall. As for me, I went straight to the plate-room.

The plate-room was a little square place at the back of the house, lined from floor to ceiling with presses. I had the key in my possession, and nobody but myself knew where I kept it. This is not a boast; it is a fact. A plate-room key has its feelings, like a human creature. If it is always being lent about and left on dressers, it gets a loose, reckless character. Mine had been brought up differently.

I put the packet in the innermost drawer of the strongest press; I locked the drawer; I locked the press; and I put the key back in its proper place. Then I stood for a moment with my hand on the door, and asked myself whether I had done right.

Robinson Crusoe says, in one part of that immortal book, that a man should never be ashamed to act with caution when caution is wanted. I had not Robinson with me then, but I had him in my head; and that came to the same thing. I had acted with caution. Therefore I went to dinner.

Later in the afternoon, I saw Mr. Franklin in the hall with my lady. He had changed his travelling clothes for a dark blue coat, which became him very well; and my lady, looking at him, as mothers and aunts look at boys who have grown into men without asking leave, had both her hands in his.

“You have come early, Franklin,” she said.

“I had a letter which hurried me,” says he.

“I know,” says my lady.

There was something in the way she said those two words which made me stop where I was. Mr. Franklin’s face altered a little.

“You know?” he repeated.

“I had a letter too,” she said. “You shall tell me about yours presently. But first, I wish to make one condition.”

“Any condition you please, aunt.”

“Under my roof,” says my lady, “the name of John Herncastle is not to be mentioned.”

Mr. Franklin looked at her steadily. The levity went out of his face; and I saw then, what I had not seen at the sands, that the letter had troubled him more than he chose to confess.

“Not mentioned by me,” says he, “unless you yourself give me leave.”

“Thank you,” says my lady. “That is all I ask.”

“And the packet?” says Mr. Franklin.

My lady raised her hand.

“Not now,” she said. “To-morrow.”

He bowed his head, and made no more questions. I was pleased with him for it. A young gentleman who can hold his tongue when he has a right to speak is a young gentleman who may come to good, even after a Continental education.

The rest of the day went by quietly enough on the surface. There were messages to be sent, rooms to be looked after, and dinner to be got ready; all the ordinary occupations, in short, which have a way of making a house look perfectly innocent when something uncommon is brewing inside it. Rosanna did not return before dinner. Penelope reported, after asking at the lodge, that nobody had seen her come back by the road from Cobb’s Hole.

“Mrs. Yolland will keep her for tea,” I said. “The girl will be home before bedtime.”

But I did not feel so easy as I spoke. There are times when a man gives an opinion merely because silence would make the women frightened; and this was one of them.

Late that evening, when the household had settled down, I took my beehive chair into its accustomed corner, with Robinson Crusoe open on my knees. The packet was safe in the plate-room, under lock and key. Mr. Franklin was under my lady’s roof; Mr. John Herncastle’s name had been forbidden there; and Rosanna Spearman was still away.

I read the same page of Robinson Crusoe three times over, without taking in one word of it.

It was on the following night, as I was returning from Chertsey by way of the common, that I saw the first of the falling stars.

The evening had been close and still, with a low vapour gathering in the hollows, and the sky, though clear overhead, was of a strange pale colour about the horizon. I had been detained later than I intended by a trifling matter at the station, and had walked a little way with Henderson, of the *Woking Journal*, who was full of the reports from Java and of the foolish conjectures that had begun to appear in the London papers. He had left me at the turn of the road, and I was alone when the thing came.

At first I thought it was a rocket.

There was a sudden greenish-white light in the sky, so vivid that the trees, the hedges, and the wet road sprang out of the darkness as if in a flash of lightning. It moved with an extraordinary swiftness, descending from somewhere high above the western sky, and behind it was a tail of fiery vapour, broad at the head and fading into sparks. For perhaps two seconds—I cannot say more—it seemed to hang in the air. Then it dipped behind the trees in the direction of Ottershaw, and a moment afterwards there came a sound.

It was not at all like thunder. Thunder rolls and breaks, and has something spacious and familiar in its voice. This was a long, tearing roar, rising to a sharp crack and ending in a dull concussion that seemed to strike the ground under my feet. The windows of a cottage half a mile away flashed into light. Dogs began barking. From the road behind me I heard a horse plunge violently in its shafts.

I stood with my hand upon the gate of a field, looking towards the darkness where the thing had vanished. A reddish reflection trembled for an instant above the trees, and went out.

There were voices in the road. Two men were running from Chertsey, and one cried out that a house had been struck. Another said it had fallen on the railway. A woman, standing at her cottage door in her nightcap, called after them to know if it was the end of the world. I remember laughing at that, though my mouth was dry; and I went on, walking quickly now, towards home.

My wife had heard the sound. She met me in the passage, pale and eager, with a candle in her hand.

“What was it?” she asked. “I thought the chimney had fallen.”

“I do not know,” I said. “A meteor, I suppose. It came down somewhere beyond the common.”

“A meteor!” she repeated. “Can a meteor make such a noise?”

“It was a very large one.”

She looked at me doubtfully, and then went with me into the little sitting-room, where the blind had not yet been drawn. From the window one could see only the black outlines of our garden and the stars above them. Mars shone bright and red in the south-east.

“There!” she said suddenly, pointing. “It is looking at us.”

I told her not to be fanciful. Yet I remember that I did not draw the blind for some time.

The next morning, before eight o’clock, Ogilvy came to our door. His face was unshaven, his coat carelessly buttoned, and his manner was that of a man who had been interrupted in the middle of some absorbing calculation.

“You heard it?” he asked, without greeting me.

“Yes.”

“Then you saw the trail?”

“I saw something falling.”

“It has come down in the old gravel workings by the stream,” he said. “At least, that is where the people say it fell. I have been there, but the mist was too thick to see anything properly. Come along.”

My wife, who had been listening from the stairs, came down at once.

“I shall come too,” she said.

“You had better not,” I told her. “There will be mud, and a crowd of idlers.”

“But I heard it,” she said. “And if it is a meteorite I want to see it.”

Ogilvy gave a short impatient laugh.

“It is a meteorite, beyond all reasonable doubt,” he said. “A very considerable one, perhaps. We shall be lucky if it is not buried altogether.”

“There was no doubt in your mind last night,” I said. “You were certain the lights on Mars had nothing to do with us.”

“And I am still certain,” he replied. “Do you suppose a thing can be fired from Mars and arrive here in a night? The notion is absurd. A meteorite is the commonest explanation, and therefore the right one.”

He spoke with a confidence which irritated me, partly because I had felt that same confidence the night before, and partly because the scene in the sky had left an impression upon me not to be argued away. The falling body had not seemed to me a chance fragment of matter wandering through space. It had had, if I may use the expression, a purpose in its descent.

We set out together by the road towards Ottershaw. The morning was bright and already warm. The mist lay in strips among the lower fields, and where it drifted across the road it had a faint sour smell of wet earth and stagnant water. We met people going the same way: labourers with their jackets over their arms, boys running ahead, women with babies, a butcher’s lad on a bicycle, and presently a cart drawn up beside a gate, its driver staring in the direction of the old pit.

The gravel workings lay in a shallow depression beyond a line of willow trees, not far from the stream that ran down towards Chertsey. They had been abandoned for years. Rain had filled the deeper parts, and the place was irregularly flooded, with steep banks of yellow clay, little shelves of shingle, clumps of rushes, and pools coated at their edges with green scum. I had passed it many times without giving it a thought.

We heard it before we saw it.

There was a hissing sound, continuous and low, as of some vast kettle boiling under the earth. Above the willows a column of white vapour rose in folds, widening as it went and drifting slowly across the sunlight. It was not smoke. It was too white and wet, and at moments the vapour broke apart to reveal flashes of silver brightness underneath.

My wife took my arm.

“I do not like it,” she said.

“Nonsense,” said Ogilvy. “It is merely hot metal meeting water.”

“But what metal?”

“Aerolitic iron, probably. Nickel, iron, perhaps other elements. We shall know later.”

There was a crowd already gathered at the edge of the pit. Most of them kept at a respectful distance, though several boys had ventured down the slope and stood among the wet stones, shouting to one another. A policeman had arrived from Chertsey and was calling to them to come back; but he had no particular authority over them, as he himself seemed to feel, and they merely laughed and went on.

Then I saw the object.

It lay in the largest pool, half covered by muddy water, and was larger than I had expected—larger than a cart, perhaps, though its shape made estimation difficult. One end had buried itself in the bank, driving up a ridge of clay and stones. The other projected from the water, blackish-grey and glittering in the sun wherever the steam did not hide it. It was not round. It had the appearance of an enormous cylinder, but crushed or indented on one side; and along its length ran faint ridges, regular as the seams on a machine-made thing.

The water immediately about it was in violent motion. It boiled and leaped against the metal, and the mud around it had become a thin, bubbling paste. Every now and then a deep note came from the cylinder itself, like the ringing of a great bell heard through water.

“There!” I said to Ogilvy. “Do ordinary meteorites come down in that shape?”

He peered at it, shading his eyes.

“They may take any form under ablation,” he said. “The outer surface is melted in transit. You cannot tell anything from its shape until it cools.”

“It looks manufactured.”

“Everything looks manufactured to a man who has been reading sensational speculation in the newspapers.”

“I have read no sensational speculation.”

“You have been looking at Mars.”

“So have you.”

He turned sharply upon me. “Looking is not believing. I observed the outbursts because they were astronomical phenomena. That is one thing. To connect them with this is another. You have no ground whatever for it.”

I was about to answer, but my wife pressed my arm again. She was watching the object with a fixed attention, and I saw that her face had lost its colour.

“Why should it steam so?” she asked.

“Because it was incandescent when it struck,” said Ogilvy, more gently. “It came through the atmosphere at a prodigious speed. It will have been hotter than a furnace.”

“But it has been here all night.”

“The water keeps drawing the heat from it. A great mass cools slowly. That is all.”

“That is all,” I repeated.

He looked at me with annoyance.

“My dear fellow, what would you have? It is not a shell from Mars. It is a stone. A piece of stone, or metal, fallen from the sky.”

“It is a very strange stone.”

“Strange enough to be interesting,” he said. “That should satisfy you.”

More people came down the path. Henderson appeared among them, carrying a notebook, and greeted me with a flourish. He had secured a bicycle somewhere and was much pleased with himself.

“Good morning,” he cried. “The first authentic visitor, I suppose, from the other side of the moon.”

“From the asteroid belt, perhaps,” said Ogilvy.

“Then I shall call it a Martian shell until you prove otherwise,” said Henderson.

“You will call it what you think will sell the *Journal*.”

“That too,” he admitted.

The policeman had managed to drive the boys back, but the crowd was growing bold with familiarity. A tall man in a stained smock, who had been drinking from a bottle, came down the bank and began picking his way across the wet ground. The constable shouted at him to return. He waved a hand without looking back.

“Let him alone,” someone said. “It’s only a lump of iron.”

The man reached the water’s edge. The heat was plainly intense there, for he halted and drew back, swearing. But the object was near enough for him to touch the exposed end if he stretched himself upon a tongue of mud. He laughed at the calls from above, crouched down, and thrust out his hand.

For a fraction of a second there was nothing. Then he sprang upright with a cry so violent that all the laughter ceased. He staggered backwards, splashing into the shallow water, clutching at his right hand. A sharp smell, like burnt horn and leather, came up through the steam.

The people upon the bank recoiled as one body.

His palm had touched the cylinder. I saw the skin of it, white and wrinkled at first, then reddening as he held it out. He was not badly hurt, as it proved; but the pain had been severe enough. Two men hauled him up the slope, and a woman began wrapping his hand in a wet handkerchief. He cursed the object continually, not so much from anger as from astonishment.

“You see!” said Ogilvy, raising his voice to the crowd. “It is hot. Keep away from it. It will be dangerous until it has cooled.”

There was a disposition to laugh again, but it was uneasy laughter. The occurrence had altered the temper of the gathering. The cylinder had ceased to be merely a curiosity. It had asserted itself.

My wife had turned away at the man’s cry. I felt her hand tremble on my sleeve.

“Let us go,” she said.

“Presently,” I answered.

“No. I do not want to stay.”

Ogilvy was already descending the bank, despite the constable’s remonstrance. He stopped at a safer distance from the water and stooped, studying the surface through his field-glasses. Henderson followed him with a careful eye upon the mud.

“What do you make of it?” Henderson asked.

“A meteoric mass,” said Ogilvy. “I have told you. It has struck obliquely, burst through the crust of the bank, and found the water. The ridges are superficial markings caused by flight.”

“Like screw threads?”

“Not screw threads,” said Ogilvy. “You must not let imagination do your observing for you.”

I looked again. The ridges were difficult to see through the vapour, and perhaps he was right. Yet I had the strongest feeling that they were not accidental. They went round the object, one after another, with a precision that made my mind reject his explanation. Moreover, at intervals, there came that muffled metallic sound from within.

I said nothing. I did not wish to seem absurd before my wife; and indeed it is remarkable how much a man’s convictions depend, at times, upon the expression in another person’s eyes. She had not heard the sound, or, if she had, had not interpreted it. She merely saw an ugly, hot mass in a pit, a burned man, and a crowd of rough strangers pressing nearer every minute.

By eleven o’clock the place had become almost a fair. Carts stood in the lane, bicycles were propped against the hedges, and people came in parties from Ottershaw and Chertsey. A man had brought a spy-glass. Two schoolboys were selling apples from a basket. The constable had sent for assistance, and someone said that the authorities had been informed. The steam still rose, though less violently than before; it spread in thin white sheets over the water and made the sunshine above the pit seem strangely bright.

My wife endured it as long as she could.

“You will come home now?” she said. “You can return if you must. But I cannot remain among all these people.”

I looked at the cylinder, then at her. There was dust on the hem of her dress, and a little mark of mud on one glove. The morning, which had begun as an adventure, had become for her something oppressive and incomprehensible. I remembered the quiet of our house, the breakfast things still perhaps upon the table, and the ordinary daylight of our garden.

“Yes,” I said. “I will walk with you to the road.”

But when we had climbed the bank she stopped.

“No,” she said. “Stay if you wish. I know you will not be content until you have discovered what it is. I can go back alone.”

I hesitated.

“It is not far.”

“I shall be quite safe.”

I kissed her, though the crowd was near enough to see; and she smiled at me in that brave, patient way of hers which has remained more clearly in my mind than many things of graver import. Then she turned along the lane towards home.

I watched her until the bend of the hedge hid her. Afterwards I went back down to the edge of the flooded pit, where Ogilvy was still peering through his glasses at the steaming thing in the water, and the crowd about us was growing continually.

When she opened her eyes again the rain was beating more heavily than ever against the window-panes, and the carriage was standing still. Mrs. Medlock was drawing on her gloves.

"Here we are," she said. "Wake up. We've got to change."

Mary sat up and looked about her. The lamps in the station made dull yellow patches through the wetness, and people were hurrying here and there under umbrellas. Everything looked wet and cold and black. She had never seen such a place before. Even the voices sounded strange to her, and the mist which hung about the lights made it seem as if the people moved in it like shadows.

Mrs. Medlock got out first. Mary followed her, holding her little bag, and then stood on the platform while a porter brought down the luggage. She was looking about her with her usual sullen expression when she saw a man standing a little apart near the end of the platform.

He was not a very old man, though his hair was dark and there was no grayness in it. He was tall and thin, and his face looked pale under the station lamp. He wore a long dark coat, and his shoulders were bent a little forward, though Mary could not tell why. He was not looking at her. He seemed to be looking away beyond the lamps and the rails and the rain, as if there were something outside the station he could see and did not care to leave.

Mrs. Medlock went toward him at once.

"She's here, sir," she said.

The man turned then and looked at Mary.

She did not like his face. It was not angry exactly, but it was as if it had forgotten how to be anything else. His eyes rested on her for a few seconds, and Mary held her head up and looked straight back at him. She did not know that she looked small and yellow and cross, standing in her black dress with the wet wind blowing the ends of her hair against her cheeks.

"So," he said.

That was all at first.

Then he glanced at Mrs. Medlock.

"Take her home," he said. "See that she has what she needs."

"Yes, sir," answered Mrs. Medlock.

He looked at Mary again.

"You are Mary Lennox," he said.

"Yes," said Mary.

"Good-night."

He turned away before she could think of anything to say, and walked quickly down the platform. A man came after him carrying a bag. Mary watched him until the mist and the rain hid him.

"Is that Mr. Craven?" she asked.

"Yes," said Mrs. Medlock, rather shortly. "Come along. Don't stand staring."

Mary picked up her bag and went after her. She had thought her uncle would perhaps say something more. It was not that she had wanted him to be kind, exactly; she did not know what kind people were expected to say to little girls who had come from India because their father and mother were dead. But she had not expected him to look at her and say "So," and then go away.

Outside the station a closed carriage was waiting. The horses stood with their heads hanging and steam rising from their wet backs. The driver had a great coat on and a hat pulled low over his forehead. Mrs. Medlock got in, and Mary climbed after her. The door shut with a heavy sound, the carriage began to move, and in a few minutes the lights of the station had vanished behind them.

For some time neither of them spoke.

Mary sat in one corner, wrapped in a rug which Mrs. Medlock had thrown over her knees. She could hear the rain upon the roof, the splash of the wheels, and the steady beat of the horses' hoofs. Once or twice a light shone through the window as they passed a cottage or a lonely house, but soon there were no lights at all. There was nothing but darkness, and the sound of the wind.

"Are we on the moor?" Mary asked at last.

"Aye," said Mrs. Medlock. "We're on it now."

"What is it like?"

"Like itself," answered Mrs. Medlock. "You'll see enough of it, most likely."

Mary pressed her face against the cold glass. She could see nothing. The darkness seemed enormous, and the wind came sweeping across it with a long, low sound which made the carriage rock a little.

"Is there nobody living on it?" she asked.

"Not much," said Mrs. Medlock. "There's sheep, and there's bits of bog, and there's heather, and there's wind enough to blow the skin off your bones if you let it."

Mary did not know what heather was, and she did not care about sheep. But she did not like the sound of bits of bog. It sounded as if people might sink into them and never come out again.

They went on and on. The road was rough in places, and sometimes the carriage jolted so that Mary was thrown against the cushions. She began to feel tired and cross again. She was cold in spite of the rug, and she wished there were people and lamps and warm rooms somewhere.

Then, quite suddenly, the horses stopped.

The driver said something from his seat, but the wind carried most of the words away. One of the horses stamped and gave a sharp snort. Mrs. Medlock leaned forward.

"What's to do now?" she called.

There was an answer which Mary could not hear.

"Something in t' road?" Mrs. Medlock said. "Well, get it moved, then."

The driver climbed down. The carriage stood still, and the wind seemed louder because the wheels were not moving. Mary heard men speaking outside, and then the door was opened.

"Best step out a minute, miss," said the driver. "Can't have t' horses standing so close."

Mary stared at him.

"Why?" she said.

"Because there's a cart canted across t' road," he answered. "One o' t' wheels has gone in a hole. We shall shift it in a bit."

"I don't want to get out," said Mary.

"You'll get wet if you sit with t' door open," said Mrs. Medlock. "Come, then. Don't be foolish."

Mary got down because she could not think of anything else to do. The driver held her hand for a moment, and then she found herself standing by the roadside in the dark.

She had never in all her life stood in such darkness. The station had been dark, but there had been lamps. India had been hot at night, and even when it was dark there had been servants moving about, or lights in rooms, or voices calling. Here there was only the wind and a smell of wet earth and wet grass. The rain had stopped, or nearly stopped, but drops blew against her face. She could see the shape of the carriage, the horses' damp sides, and farther away a black crooked thing which must be the cart.

"Stand close by me," said Mrs. Medlock.

Mary did not stand close. She moved one little step away from the carriage and looked out.

There was no end to the dark. It seemed to spread away on every side and rise up against the sky. The clouds were moving fast, and once a pale light broke through them and showed her a wide stretch of rough ground, rolling and falling away into blackness. There were low bushes upon it, and pools which caught the faint light and then disappeared. The wind ran over everything and made a sound as if it were talking to itself.

Mary felt very small.

"What is that?" she said before she could prevent herself.

"The moor," answered Mrs. Medlock.

Mary stood still a few seconds longer. She did not want Mrs. Medlock to think she was frightened, but she was glad when the driver came back.

"All right now," he said. "Get in, little miss."

When the carriage started again Mary did not press her face against the window. She sat quite close in her corner, with the rug drawn up to her chin. Mrs. Medlock looked at her once or twice, but said nothing. Perhaps she thought the child was asleep. But Mary was not asleep. She was thinking of the wide blackness and of the wind which had seemed to be alive.

At last the horses slowed down. There was a sound of wheels on stones, and then a gate creaked open. The carriage passed through, went on for what seemed a long time, and stopped before a great dark mass which rose against the cloudy sky.

"We're here," said Mrs. Medlock.

A door was opened before they had reached it. Light streamed out across the wet stones, and a manservant stood in the doorway. He was a thin, grave-looking man with gray hair and a long face. He did not look like any servant Mary had ever seen in India. He had no turban, of course, and he did not smile or bow in the way the native servants had done.

"Tha's got her, then," he said to Mrs. Medlock.

"Aye, Thomas," she answered. "Here she is."

The man looked down at Mary.

"Come in, then, missie," he said.

Mary went in. The great door shut behind her, and the sound it made echoed away into the house. She found herself in a huge hall with a stone floor and dark walls. There were lamps burning, but they only made little islands of yellow light, and beyond them there were shadows. She could see a staircase going up and up, and dark portraits looking down from the walls. She could not tell whether they were men or women.

"Take her upstairs," said Mrs. Medlock. "She's to have some supper first."

Thomas took up Mary's bag, and Mrs. Medlock led the way. They went across the hall and through a passage, and then up a broad flight of stairs. Mary did not speak. The place seemed full of doors. They passed one, two, three, and more, all shut. The passages turned and turned again. The lamps were far apart, and their light made the corners look blacker.

At last Mrs. Medlock opened a door and took her into a room where a fire was burning. It was a large room, too, but it seemed warmer because of the fire. There was a table set near it, with a white cloth and a tray upon it.

"Sit thee down," said Thomas. "Tha'll be wanting summat warm inside thee."

Mary looked at him.

"I don't know what you say," she answered.

Thomas blinked at her, and then his long face changed a little, as if he were trying not to smile.

"I said you'll be wanting something warm to eat," he explained, slowly. "There's soup, and bread, and a bit o' chicken."

"I can understand that," said Mary.

"Aye," said Thomas. "I daresay tha can."

He put the tray before her. The soup smelled good, though Mary would not have said so. She had eaten very little during the day, and after the first spoonful she began to eat quickly. Thomas stood near the table, waiting in a stiff, quiet way.

"Is there nobody but you and Mrs. Medlock?" Mary asked.

"There's folk enough in t' house," answered Thomas. "But tha'll see them when tha sees them."

"Why do you speak so queerly?" said Mary.

Thomas looked more amused than offended.

"That's Yorkshire, that is," he said. "It's plain enough if you've heard it all your life."

"I have not heard it all my life," said Mary. "I have lived in India."

"Then tha'll have to learn," said Thomas.

Mary frowned at him, but he did not seem to mind. He poured her some milk and then went to stand by the fire.

"Is Mr. Craven in the house?" she asked.

Thomas's face became grave again.

"He came in afore you," he answered.

"Will I see him?"

"That'll be as he pleases."

Mary did not like that answer. It was like Mrs. Medlock's answers. Everybody at Misselthwaite seemed to speak as if Mr. Craven were something they must not talk about.

When she had finished eating, Mrs. Medlock came back. Thomas took away the tray, and Mary was led upstairs again. This time they went farther than before. The stairs seemed never to end. At the top of one flight Mrs. Medlock stopped and opened a door.

"This is your room," she said. "You'll sleep here."

Mary looked in. There was a four-posted bed with dark hangings, a fireplace, a dressing-table, and a high wardrobe. It was much too big for one little girl. There was another door at the side.

"That leads into my room," said Mrs. Medlock. "You are not to go wandering about. You are to stay where you're told. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Mary.

"There'll be a woman come in to get you ready in the morning. To-night you can do as you can. Your things are in your bag, and Thomas will see to the rest."

Mary did not say that she was not used to doing anything for herself. She was too proud to say it. Mrs. Medlock lighted a candle by the bed.

"If you want anything, ring," she said. "And don't make a fuss."

She went out and shut the door.

Mary stood alone in the middle of the room. The fire had been lighted, but it burned low. She took off her hat and gloves and dress as best she could. It was tiresome work. The buttons were difficult, and she became cross with them. At last she got into bed and pulled the covers over her.

For a little while she lay looking at the candle-flame. The room was so large that she could scarcely believe she was really in it. The curtains round the bed made a sort of little enclosure, and beyond them the rest of the room was dim and shadowy. She could hear the wind outside, rushing and sighing against the house.

Then Mrs. Medlock came in to put out the candle.

"You'll sleep well enough," she said. "You've had a long journey."

"I hear something," said Mary.

Mrs. Medlock paused with her hand over the flame.

"It's the wind," she answered.

"It isn't," said Mary. "It is in the house."

"Wind gets in everywhere in a place like this," said Mrs. Medlock sharply. "Go to sleep."

She put out the candle and went away.

Mary lay in the darkness. At first she heard only the wind, and then she heard it again—the other sound. It was faint and far away, as if it came through walls and passages and shut doors. It stopped, and began, and stopped once more.

Mrs. Medlock had said it was the wind.

Mary did not believe her.

She lay quite still in bed, with her eyes open in the dark, and before she fell asleep she had decided that some day she would find out for herself what the sound was.

I went to the First National Bank.

It was a stone building with brass rails, marble floors and a smell of money that had been shut up too long. I asked for somebody who could tell me about a check.

A gray-haired man in a black coat came over from a desk behind the tellers’ cages. His name was Hargis, he said, and he was assistant cashier.

I showed him my Continental badge.

“I’m working on the Willsson shooting,” I said. “Donald Willsson drew a five-thousand-dollar check yesterday afternoon. I want to know whether it has been through here.”

He looked at me without liking it, but he took me to a little office and shut the door.

“Have you the number?” he asked.

“No. It was the last check in his book. The stub gave the amount and nothing else.”

“His account is in his own name?”

“Yes.”

Hargis found a ledger, turned pages with a wet thumb and got on the telephone. He asked questions in a low careful voice. Then he hung up and made another call. He was slower with the second one.

“At present,” he said when he had finished, “there is no record of payment against that item.”

“Maybe it was certified.”

“No.”

“Maybe it was brought in after banking hours.”

“It could have been. It would not have been certified after hours.”

“Could it have been cashed without coming through the bank?”

“If Mr. Willsson made it payable to bearer, or endorsed it in blank, somebody might have negotiated it elsewhere. It would come back to us eventually.”

“Unless it was lost.”

“Unless it was lost.”

“Or unless the man who got it is waiting.”

Hargis put the ledger’s cover down.

“That would be possible.”

“Was Willsson in here yesterday?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Anybody from his office?”

“I couldn’t say that either.”

“You could find out.”

His expression hardened a little.

“I might. But I am not in the habit of making inquiries into our customers’ affairs merely because a detective asks me to.”

“Donald Willsson is dead.”

“I know that.”

“The check was written after a telephone call. He went out with it and came back in twenty minutes. Last night he was murdered. I’m trying to find out where five thousand dollars went.”

Hargis looked down at the closed ledger. He had decided he was not being paid to be helpful.

“If it reaches this bank,” he said, “we will know who presented it.”

“Will you let me know?”

“I’ll notify the police.”

“That’s better than nothing.”

Outside, I stood on the steps and watched the street traffic make smoke and noise in the bright noon. Five thousand dollars was a good-sized piece of bait. It was too much for a casual woman with a grievance and too little for any of the big boys in Personville, unless it had bought something besides a murder.

I ate lunch in a Broadway restaurant. The food was pale and dead-looking, but I ate enough of it to make a good foundation for whiskey later on if I needed one. Then I went back to the Great Western.

The clerk had a square white envelope for me.

“There’s a lady waiting upstairs,” he said. “Said you’d see her.”

“She say who she was?”

“No.”

“She alone?”

“Yes.”

I took the elevator to my floor. The elevator boy looked as if he knew something and wanted to trade it for a tip. I didn’t give him the chance.

My door was open. Mrs. Donald Willsson was sitting in the chair by the window, with the afternoon light on one side of her face. She had on a dark blue dress and a small blue hat that made her hair look paler. Her green slippers were gone. Her shoes were black.

She got up when I came in.

“I hope you do not mind,” she said.

“I minded more when I found the door open.”

“I told the maid you had asked me to wait.”

“That was smart.”

“I had to see you.”

I shut the door, tossed my hat on the bed and looked at her. She looked tired, but there was more life in her than there had been in the house the night before. Her eyes had lost their glassiness. They were gray now and busy.

“Sit down,” I said. “What’s the hurry?”

She sat in the straight chair. I took the other one.

“You went to see Mr. Willsson’s father this morning,” she said.

“News travels.”

“Everything travels here.”

“Did somebody tell you what I said to him?”

“No. But I know the kind of things he would say.”

“You came to tell me he was wrong?”

“He always is, when it concerns me.”

“That’s a wide statement. What specifically?”

She folded her hands in her lap. Her fingers were thin and white.

“He thinks I killed Donald.”

“He said so.”

“And you?”

“I think somebody killed Donald.”

“That is very funny.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

She looked away from me toward the window.

“I did not kill him,” she said.

“I didn’t expect you to say you did.”

“You saw the blood.”

“I saw something on your slipper that looked like blood.”

“It was blood.”

“Whose?”

“I do not know.”

“That isn’t good enough.”

“No,” she agreed. “It is not.”

I waited. She was doing the kind of thinking people do when they are trying to decide which lie will hurt them least.

“At ten-twenty,” she said, “I had a telephone call. A woman told me Donald had met with an accident. She gave me an address in Hurricane Street. I asked who she was. She said there was no time to explain.”

“You believed her?”

“I did not know what to believe. Donald had been worried. He had said things were coming to a head.”

“What things?”

“He did not tell me. He was always protecting me. Or perhaps he did not trust me. I do not know which.”

“You drove to Hurricane Street?”

“Yes.”

“You found him?”

“I found a crowd. There were police. I could not get close at first. Then I saw him on the sidewalk.”

“You touched him?”

“I knelt beside him. There was blood on the pavement. I put my hand under his head. I think my slipper touched it when I got up.”

“Who was with him?”

“I do not know. Men were around me. Somebody told me to go away.”

“You didn’t tell the police you were his wife?”

“I was frightened. I had heard them saying he was dead. I did not want them to know I had come there because of a telephone call. It seemed—I do not know—it seemed I would be suspected.”

“You were.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this last night?”

She raised her face. It was a pretty face and a scared one.

“Because I had just seen my husband lying in the street. Because you were a stranger. Because I did not know whether you were connected with the people who had killed him.”

“That covers a lot of territory.”

“In Personville it has to.”

“Describe the woman who phoned.”

“I cannot. Her voice was low. She spoke as if she were afraid.”

“Did she have an accent?”

“I could not tell.”

“Did Donald leave a message for you before he went out?”

“No.”

“Did he have five thousand dollars to give somebody?”

Her eyes moved, then came back to me.

“You know about that?”

“I know he wrote the check.”

“He did not tell me.”

“Did he have a woman?”

She gave a short laugh that had no amusement in it.

“You ask that very easily.”

“It’s an easy question.”

“He had friends. Women who admired him. He liked admiration.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No. I do not know. I thought perhaps—once or twice—I thought there was someone. But I had no proof.”

“Any name?”

“No.”

“Max Thaler was at your house this morning.”

Her hands tightened together.

“Yes.”

“What did he want?”

“He came to offer sympathy.”

“Did he?”

“He said Donald’s death was a great loss to the city. He said I must not let people make trouble for me.”

“What people?”

“He did not say.”

“Did he mention me?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“That you were a detective from San Francisco and that you were making a mistake by asking questions about Donald’s private affairs.”

“He’s a thoughtful fellow.”

“He said you had gone to see Mr. Willsson’s father.”

“Did he say why he was interested?”

“No.”

“Did he make any threats?”

“No. He was very gentle.”

“That’s what makes him dangerous.”

She looked sharply at me. Then she stood up.

“I did not come here to give evidence against Mr. Thaler,” she said. “I came because I thought you should know about the telephone call.”

“You came because Thaler told you I was asking questions.”

“Perhaps.”

“Who gave you my room number?”

“I asked at the desk.”

“You are trusting.”

“I have no one else to trust.”

“That’s a bad reason for trusting me.”

“I know.”

She went to the door. I opened it for her.

“Don’t go alone to any more addresses sent by telephone,” I said.

She put her hand on the knob and looked back.

“Do you believe me?”

“I believe you went to Hurricane Street. The rest will have to earn its way.”

She nodded, as if that was what she had expected, and went out.

I waited until I heard the elevator start down before I closed my door. Then I called the desk and asked who had brought the envelope.

“A bellboy left it,” the clerk said. “He said it was for you.”

“Which bellboy?”

“Not one of ours.”

“Did he wait?”

“No, sir.”

The envelope had no writing on it. Inside was a single sheet of cheap gray paper. It said:

MR. NEILL:

YOU HAVE COME A LONG WAY TO MIND OTHER PEOPLE’S BUSINESS. TAKE THE NEXT TRAIN HOME.

M. T.

There was no signature except the initials. There did not have to be. The message had Max Thaler’s soft polite fingers all over it.

I put the note in my pocket and went downstairs. The clerk was still trying to look innocent.

“What did the boy look like?” I asked.

“Just a boy.”

“Tall, short, thin, fat?”

“Medium.”

“Did he have a name?”

“No, sir.”

“Was he waiting here when the lady came?”

The clerk’s eyes slipped sideways.

“I couldn’t say.”

“You could, but you won’t.”

He smiled the way men smile when they think their job may depend on not knowing things.

I went out and walked around the block. There was no Stutz, no brown suit, no small dark profile. I didn’t expect any. Thaler had taken the trouble to keep his face out of it. That meant either he was careful or he wanted me to know he was careful.

The afternoon went into a dirty dusk. I called the Herald and asked for Miss Lewis. Somebody said she had gone home. I asked for the city editor. He was busy and stayed busy. I didn’t insist. The Herald had given me all it was going to give me for one day.

I had dinner in the hotel dining room, drank two highballs and went back upstairs. I read the message from Thaler again. It had not improved.

At seven-thirty I wrote a wire to the Old Man in San Francisco. I took it down to the desk myself, because I did not feel like trusting it to the elevator boy, the clerk, or anybody else who made his living in the Great Western.

It read:

DONALD WILLSSON MURDERED BEFORE APPOINTMENT WITH ME. WIDOW WAS AT SCENE AFTER ANONYMOUS PHONE CALL AND MAY BE MIXED UP. REFORM CAMPAIGN APPEARS TO HAVE ANGERED THALER YARD FINN AND NOONAN. ELIHU WILLSSON HOSTILE AND POSSIBLY INVOLVED. DONALD DREW FIVE THOUSAND DOLLAR CHECK YESTERDAY AFTER PHONE CALL. CHECK NOT PRESENTED OR CERTIFIED. THALER HAS WARNED ME OFF. STAYING ON JOB. CONTINENTAL OP.

The night clerk counted the words, named a price and sent it.

Back in my room I locked the door, pulled the shade down and sat by the window with the light off. Across the street, windows made yellow squares in the darkness. A street car went past, grinding and throwing blue sparks. Somewhere below, a woman laughed too loud. Then a man told her to shut up.

The five-thousand-dollar check was still out. It might be in a pocket, in a drawer, in the bottom of a river, or burning to ash in somebody’s stove. It had been written for somebody. Until I found out who, I had less than nothing.

The description of strychnine poisoning did not altogether reassure me. On the contrary, the more I read, the more strongly did the terrible scenes we had just witnessed return to my mind—the fearful convulsions, the rigidity, and the strange arching of the body. I shut the book with a shiver.

There was no longer any doubt in my mind. Mrs. Inglethorp had been poisoned.

I made my way quietly out of the house. The morning was fresh and still; the threatening storm had passed without breaking, and a pale, watery sun was beginning to show itself through the clouds. It seemed incredible that the village should be waking peacefully to its ordinary life, whilst at Styles Court tragedy had come so suddenly and so horribly.

I found Poirot in the little garden behind the cottage which he shared with several of his compatriots. He was standing beside a bed of geraniums, regarding them with an air of grave displeasure. In one hand he held a minute pair of scissors. On seeing me, he laid them down carefully.

“My friend Hastings,” he said. “You arrive with the face of a man who has bad news.”

“You know, then?”

“But certainly.”

I stared at him.

“How could you possibly know?”

“My dear friend, in a village there are no secrets. At half-past six this morning Mrs. Todd, the postmistress, came to bring a message to Madame Raikes. She saw the motor-car at the lodge, she heard that Dr. Wilkins had been fetched in the night, and before she reached the post office the news had grown. By seven o’clock, it had grown still more.”

“And Mrs. Todd told you?”

“Precisely. She has a good heart, that lady, and a very bad habit of conversation.”

“But Mrs. Inglethorp is dead,” I said bluntly. “And I believe that she was poisoned.”

Poirot’s expression changed. The little smile left his face. He picked up his scissors, fitted them into their leather case, and slipped the case into his pocket.

“You have permission to bring me to Styles?”

“Yes. John has left the matter in my hands.”

“Then we go at once.”

We had gone only a few yards down the lane when Poirot stopped.

“One moment. You say that Monsieur Inglethorp was not in the house?”

“No. His bed had not been slept in. He went out last night after dinner, to walk with Dr. Bauerstein, and told us not to wait up.”

Poirot nodded slowly.

“And he has not returned?”

“Not when I left.”

“Ah!” said Poirot. “That is interesting.”

The word irritated me. It seemed a singularly cold one in the circumstances.

“Interesting?” I repeated.

“My friend, all facts are interesting. It is only the explanations which are sometimes unfortunate.”

We walked on in silence. Poirot’s manner had become very quiet and intent. I knew that look upon his face. It meant that his little grey cells, of which he was so inordinately proud, were already at work.

At the lodge gates we met Baily coming down the drive. He was red-faced and excited, and in his hand he carried a spade, which he seemed to have forgotten to put down.

“Mr. Inglethorp’s come back, sir,” he said to me.

“Come back?”

“Yes, sir. Come in by the side gate about ten minutes ago. Mr. Cavendish is speaking to him in the hall.”

Poirot’s eyes rested on me for a moment.

“Then perhaps we shall hear an explanation.”

In the hall at Styles there was a curious hush. It was not the stillness of ordinary mourning, but rather an uneasy, strained silence. The servants moved about noiselessly, and every face I saw bore the same expression of frightened curiosity.

John and Alfred Inglethorp were standing together near the library door. Mr. Inglethorp looked tired and somewhat disordered. His black coat was dusty, and there was a small smear of mud upon one knee of his trousers. He held his hat in his hand. His manner, however, was composed enough.

“Ah, Hastings,” said John. “You have brought Monsieur Poirot.”

Mr. Inglethorp turned sharply. For an instant I thought that something like anger flashed in his dark eyes. Then he bowed.

“Mr. Hastings has told us that you were out all night,” said John. “Will you tell us where you were?”

“Certainly.” Mr. Inglethorp spoke slowly, with an air of injury. “After Dr. Bauerstein left me at the village, I walked on a little way. It was hot in the house, and I had no inclination for bed. I went to the Dog and Partridge, where I met an old acquaintance of mine, a man named Mace, who farms at Wooton. We sat talking until late. Afterwards I walked with him to his farm. I remained there until this morning.”

“Why did you not come back?” asked John.

“I had no wish to disturb the household. I had told you all not to wait up.”

“And you never came into the house again?”

“Certainly not.”

Just then Dorcas came forward from the doorway of the dining-room. She had plainly been listening, though she tried to look unconscious of the fact.

“If you’ll excuse me, sir,” she said to John, “I don’t know as that can be quite right.”

Mr. Inglethorp turned on her.

“What do you mean?”

Dorcas coloured, but did not retreat.

“I don’t wish to say anything I oughtn’t, sir. Only Annie told me that she saw you last night.”

“Saw me?”

“Yes, sir. She was awake with the toothache, poor girl, and went downstairs for some hot water. She says it was about two o’clock, and that she saw you come in through the side door, by the pantry. She says you crossed the inner hall and went towards the stairs.”

Mr. Inglethorp’s face had changed. It had not become pale, exactly, but it had taken on a singularly rigid look.

“Annie is mistaken,” he said. “I was nowhere near the house.”

“Perhaps, sir,” said Dorcas obstinately. “But she says she is sure. You had your black coat on, and were carrying something wrapped in a handkerchief.”

“Absurd!” cried Mr. Inglethorp. “The girl must have been dreaming.”

“Very likely,” said John shortly. “We need not discuss it now.”

Mr. Inglethorp looked from one to another of us. His eyes rested for a moment on Poirot.

“Is there some reason for all this questioning?”

John hesitated, and I saw the pain which crossed his face.

“My mother died during the night.”

For the first time Mr. Inglethorp seemed genuinely shaken. He put out a hand to steady himself against the table.

“Died?” he repeated. “Emily—dead?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause. Then he said, in a low voice:

“I must go upstairs.”

John’s hand fell on his arm.

“No, Alfred. The rooms are locked.”

Mr. Inglethorp looked at him keenly.

“Locked?”

“The doctors thought it best.”

“Indeed?” said Mr. Inglethorp. “Then I suppose there is nothing further to be said.”

He turned away. As he did so, I noticed that his hand clenched tightly about the brim of his hat.

Poirot had not spoken throughout the scene. Now he addressed John.

“I should like, if you permit it, to see the room of Madame Inglethorp.”

John glanced at him doubtfully.

“Bauerstein locked it. He left the keys with me.”

“Then you have the right to admit whom you choose. I will touch nothing unnecessarily.”

John produced the keys. We went upstairs, Poirot and I following him. At the door of Mrs. Inglethorp’s room he stopped.

“I should rather you came in alone, Poirot,” he said. “I—I do not feel able to go over it again.”

“Perfectly,” said Poirot gently.

He took the key, and the two of us entered. Poirot locked the door behind us.

The room was very orderly, save for the overturned table at the bedside and the disarray of the bed. The bright morning light made everything look strangely innocent and peaceful. The little ornaments on the mantelpiece, which had seemed so sinister in the dim candle-light, were now merely ugly and harmless. Yet I felt once more that cold, creeping sensation at the back of my neck.

Poirot stood quite still.

“Do not move, Hastings.”

I had been about to cross to the bed, and stopped obediently.

He moved slowly round the room, his hands clasped behind him, his head a little bent. He looked at the hearth, the windows, the washstand, the writing-table, and the carpet. Once he knelt down beside the overturned table, examining the floor with great care. Then he went to the fireplace.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

He made no answer.

The ashes in the grate had been disturbed. There were one or two pieces of half-burnt paper among them. Poirot took a small pair of forceps from his pocket. With infinite care, he lifted something which at first I could not distinguish. It was a tiny scrap of green stuff, crumpled and blackened at one edge.

“A piece of paper?” I said.

“Perhaps.”

He laid it on a clean handkerchief and looked at it through a small magnifying-glass.

“What is it?”

“Patience, my friend.”

He crossed to the dressing-table. There stood Mrs. Inglethorp’s little tray of bottles and powders, all arranged in their accustomed order. Poirot surveyed them without touching them. Then he turned his attention to the coffee-cup, which had been placed on a small tray near the window. It was empty.

“Was this brought up after the doctor came?” he asked.

“I do not know.”

Poirot bent over it, sniffed, and then straightened himself.

“You saw Madame Inglethorp take coffee after dinner?”

“No. Alfred carried it in to her. She had not drunk it when she went upstairs. She took the cup with her.”

“Ah, yes.”

He appeared to reflect for a moment. Then he examined the bed. He did not touch the dead woman, but his eyes travelled over the pillows, the sheets, and the coverlet. Suddenly he moved to the mantelpiece and looked closely at the clock.

“It stopped at twenty minutes past five,” I observed.

Poirot shook his head.

“No. It has run down. Observe the winding-key.”

I looked, but could see nothing remarkable.

At that moment there came a faint knock at the door. Poirot opened it an inch. Dorcas stood outside.

“Miss Cynthia is asking if she may come in, sir. She says she wants her dressing-case, which is in her room, and the door between is bolted.”

“Tell her to wait,” said Poirot. Then he paused. “No. Bring her here.”

A moment later Cynthia came along the corridor with Dorcas. She looked pale and exhausted. Her eyes had dark circles beneath them, and she was still wearing the blue dressing-gown in which I had seen her earlier.

Poirot regarded her kindly.

“Mademoiselle, you slept very soundly last night?”

“Yes,” said Cynthia simply. “I never woke until Mary shook me. I did not hear a thing.”

Poirot bowed.

“Thank you, mademoiselle.”

That was all. Cynthia looked bewildered, and Dorcas led her away.

“You see?” I said, when the door had closed. “That seems important. If she heard nothing, nobody could have got through from her room.”

“Do not make the conclusions too quickly, Hastings. It is bad for the digestion.”

He resumed his examination. At length he returned to the fireplace and picked up the handkerchief on which the little green object lay. He turned it over carefully, and then placed it upon the centre of the writing-table.

“What is it?” I demanded.

Poirot’s face was very grave.

“A little thing,” he said. “A very little thing. Yet sometimes the little things are the most terrible.”

“But surely you can tell me whether it is paper?”

“No.”

“Not paper?”

“I did not say that. I said only that I cannot tell you.”

This maddened me.

“Poirot, you are insufferable! You bring me here, you find a scrap in the grate, and then you will not explain why it interests you.”

“My friend, if I explain to you what I do not yet understand myself, where is the use? You would form an idea, and thereafter every fact would be made to fit that idea. That is not the method of Hercule Poirot.”

He sat down in Mrs. Inglethorp’s chair, his eyes fixed upon the small green fragment between us.

Outside, through the open window, I could hear the ordinary sounds of the morning—the rattle of a cart upon the road, the calling of a child somewhere in the garden, and the distant voices of the servants below. It was late morning now. The sunlight had grown strong, and lay in broad bars across the carpet.

Poirot took up the fragment once more and turned it gently with the point of his finger.

“Tell me, Hastings,” he said, “when a thing is burnt, why should the part which one wishes most to destroy be the part which remains?”

The young woman had not gone a dozen yards from the bureau before she stopped and looked at the umbrella in her hand.

It was a very good umbrella. This, indeed, was the principal difficulty. Had it been one of those battered and furtive objects which seem to have lived all their lives in railway refreshment-rooms, Eve would have felt less troubled. But the umbrella was manifestly an umbrella of character. It had an air of self-respect, and the little silver band about its handle seemed to reproach her.

She turned back.

The porter at the Drones Club, a man whose demeanour suggested that he had been born in a top-hat and had never worn anything else, received the umbrella with grave attention.

“I want to give this back,” said Eve. “A gentleman lent it to me this morning. I don’t know his name.”

The porter looked at the umbrella. It was clear that this simple statement had stirred depths within him.

“Did the gentleman belong to the club, miss?”

“I think so. He ran in there afterwards.”

“Very good, miss.”

“Will you give him this, too?”

Eve had taken a sheet of paper from her bag and written a few words upon it. The porter accepted it, inspected the superscription, and appeared relieved to find that it was not a communication to be delivered to the Prime Minister.

“I am much obliged, miss.”

“And please tell him it was awfully kind of him.”

“I will see that he receives the message, miss.”

Eve went on her way, leaving the porter in possession of an umbrella and a note which read:

Dear Sir,

Thank you ever so much for rescuing me from the rain. I hope you did not get soaked.

Yours very gratefully,

A Stranger.

The porter, having read this missive with the careful detachment of a man making up a catalogue, placed it inside the umbrella and deposited both in the cloak-room. Then he resumed his watch upon Dover Street.

The affair would probably have ended there, but fate, which had been busy all day in the neighbourhood of the Drones Club, was not yet satisfied.

At about half-past two the Honourable Mr. Walderwick entered the club in a state of acute discomfort. He was a large young man with a scarlet face and a manner which suggested that he had recently attempted to do something useful and had failed. The rain had ceased, but Mr. Walderwick was damp in every part of him which rain could reach, and he had left a motor-car in Piccadilly which, he asserted, was built on the lines of a bathroom.

He found Psmith in the smoking-room.

“I say, Smith,” said Mr. Walderwick, “have you seen my umbrella?”

Psmith, who was seated in a deep chair, raised his monocle.

“Your umbrella, Comrade Walderwick?”

“My umbrella. Rather a decent silk one. Silver band. Name on it.”

“Ah, yes.”

“You have seen it?”

“I have not merely seen it. I have communed with it. It is at present in the cloak-room.”

“Why?”

Psmith considered this question for a moment.

“It seemed to me,” he said at last, “that an umbrella of its quality should not be exposed unnecessarily to the more trying aspects of club life.”

Mr. Walderwick stared.

“What the deuce do you mean?”

“My meaning, if I may put it in a word, is that the umbrella is safe.”

“Why is it in the cloak-room?”

“Because I put it there.”

“You put it there?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you get it?”

“From the umbrella-rack.”

“You took my umbrella out of the umbrella-rack?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

Psmith’s face wore its gentlest expression. It was the expression which he commonly assumed when addressing persons whose intellectual processes had become temporarily confused.

“My dear Walderwick,” he said, “the question is a reasonable one, and I will answer it. I took the umbrella from the rack because it was raining.”

“And where is it now?”

“As I have already stated, in the cloak-room.”

“I want it.”

“Then, by all means, have it.”

Mr. Walderwick rose with the air of a man who has decided to take legal advice. Psmith detained him with a lifted hand.

“One moment. There is a slight complication.”

“What complication?”

“I have bought the umbrella.”

“You have what?”

“Purchased it. Acquired it. Made it my own, subject only to the laws of England and the claims of a higher morality.”

“You bought it from whom?”

“From you.”

“I never sold it to you.”

“Not yet. But I am about to buy it.”

Mr. Walderwick’s face darkened. He had not lunched well, and the thought of his umbrella being made the subject of verbal sleight-of-hand was beginning to jar upon him.

“Look here, Smith--”

“Psmith,” said Psmith reprovingly.

“Oh, damn it, Psmith, what’s the game?”

“The game, if you like, is that I am prepared to pay you fifty pounds for the umbrella.”

Mr. Walderwick blinked.

“Fifty pounds?”

“Cash.”

“For an umbrella?”

“It is a fine umbrella.”

“It cost six guineas.”

“Then you have done exceedingly well, and I congratulate you upon your business instincts. Fifty pounds.”

Mr. Walderwick looked suspiciously at him.

“Is there something wrong with it?”

“Nothing whatever. It opens, it shuts, and, when spread above the head, it excludes the rain. I have tested it personally.”

“Then why do you want it?”

Psmith sighed.

“Walderwick, there are moments when the human mind should refrain from probing. Let us say that I have conceived an attachment to the thing. I am lonely. The umbrella has come into my life. Fifty pounds.”

The Honourable Mr. Walderwick was a man who knew when to take a gift from Providence. He sat down again.

“Cheque?”

“Certainly.”

Psmith wrote the cheque with a firm hand. Mr. Walderwick received it, turned it over, and gazed at it as a man gazes at an old friend whom he has long believed dead.

“Thanks,” he said simply.

“Not at all.”

“You can have the umbrella.”

“It is most amiable of you.”

Mr. Walderwick went out, and Psmith remained in the smoking-room for some time, looking thoughtfully at the rain-washed windows. Then he rang for the attendant and requested the umbrella.

The attendant brought it, together with the note.

Psmith read the note twice. On the second occasion the gentle solemnity of his face deepened.

“A Stranger,” he murmured. “A nom de guerre. A mysterious signature. The plot thickens.”

He put the note carefully into his pocket, took the umbrella, and left the club.

* * * * *

Eve Halliday had not found the afternoon an easy one. The rain had stopped, and Shaftesbury Avenue, steaming gently in the pale sunshine, looked cheerful enough; but there were moments, even in the brightest weather, when a girl who has three pounds seven shillings and sixpence in the world cannot wholly surrender herself to the beauty of London.

She lunched economically at a small tea-shop, and then set out for the address which Lady Constance Keeble’s secretary had given her over the telephone: a house in Berkeley Square, where Lord Emsworth was to be found until the evening train took him northward.

The interview was fixed for four o’clock. At ten minutes past three Eve was walking through Green Park, partly because she had time to spare and partly because a taxi would have cost money. She had just paused to look at a small boy who was engaged in a heated argument with a nursemaid concerning a wooden spade, when somebody coming rapidly round a bend in the path collided with her.

It was the tall young man of the morning.

He had not a hat on his head. The black umbrella was under his arm.

For one instant Eve looked at him in astonishment. Then she laughed.

“Oh!” she cried. “It’s you!”

Psmith removed his monocle, polished it with a silk handkerchief, and restored it to its place.

“I fear,” he said, “that I have committed a bodily assault.”

“You gave me an umbrella.”

“Did I?”

“Yes. Outside the coal place in Dover Street. You can’t possibly have forgotten.”

Psmith regarded her with grave concern.

“My memory, I regret to say, has never been what it should be. It is a faithful servant in most matters, but there are occasions when it shows an almost Bolshevik independence.”

“But it was you.”

“Then,” said Psmith, “I can only hope that the incident gave satisfaction.”

“It gave me a completely dry hat. I returned the umbrella to the club.”

“Did you, indeed?”

“To the porter. I left a note, too.”

“How very kind.”

Eve gave him a puzzled look. It was impossible to decide whether he was laughing at her, and yet there was nothing in his expression which could properly be called laughter.

“You really don’t remember?”

“I remember,” said Psmith, “that it rained this morning. I remember also that London possesses a great many coal-merchants. Beyond that, I hesitate to commit myself.”

“You are very odd.”

“I have sometimes been told so.”

“Well, at any rate, thank you again.”

“It was a pleasure.”

He made her a small, correct bow, and Eve, finding that there seemed nothing more to be said, went on towards Berkeley Square. After she had gone some distance she turned. The young man was still standing where she had left him, watching the little boy and the nursemaid. The umbrella rested against his shoulder.

It struck Eve that there was something rather nice about him. It was not, she felt, chiefly the monocle. There had been a good deal of nice-looking nonsense in her life, and she distrusted it. But his voice had been kind, and he had given her an umbrella without making a fuss about it. If he chose to pretend that he had not, that was his affair.

Psmith, meanwhile, resumed his stroll, his meditations not entirely concerned with the weather.

* * * * *

At four o’clock precisely Eve presented herself at the house in Berkeley Square. It was a large, quiet house, and the footman who admitted her looked at her hat with the expression of one who had been instructed by nature to disapprove of all hats except those worn by the female members of the family.

She was shown into a drawing-room where Lord Emsworth, pale and vague and apparently very much surprised to find himself there, was sitting in a chair beside a small table. Rupert Baxter stood behind him with a notebook.

“Miss Halliday, my lord,” said Baxter.

Lord Emsworth started.

“Eh? Yes. How do you do?”

“How do you do, Lord Emsworth?”

“Library,” said Lord Emsworth, seeming to seize upon the word with relief. “I understand you wish to catalogue the library.”

“Yes, Lord Emsworth.”

“Most necessary. Very necessary. Baxter has been saying so for years.”

Baxter’s spectacles flashed. He had the look of a man who had been saying a great many things for years and who did not intend to have them credited to anybody else.

“There are, my lord,” he said, “a number of valuable volumes at Blandings Castle which require systematic classification.”

“Exactly,” said Lord Emsworth. “Very valuable. Books. I have always been fond of books.”

He peered vaguely about the room, as though hoping to discover some.

Baxter cleared his throat.

“Miss Halliday,” he said, “has had experience in cataloguing?”

“A little. I helped with the library at Wayland House.”

“Wayland House?”

“It was my school.”

Lord Emsworth’s attention wandered to the window. A pigeon had alighted upon the sill. He watched it with the rapt interest of a man to whom pigeons are a wholly new experience.

“Your qualifications,” said Baxter, “would include acquaintance with standard systems?”

“I know the Dewey system.”

Lord Emsworth suddenly turned round.

“Dewey?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Not,” said Lord Emsworth anxiously, “the fellow who writes to me about the roses?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Ah. Good. I have had enough of him.”

Baxter’s jaw tightened.

“The interview,” he said, “is not concerned with roses, my lord.”

“Of course not, Baxter. Nobody said it was.”

There was a silence. Eve, who had begun to feel that the room was full of invisible wires along which danger travelled, glanced at the table beside Lord Emsworth. Upon it lay a collection of papers, a pen, and what appeared to be a menu from a restaurant.

Baxter followed her glance and stepped forward quickly.

“My lord,” he said, “the papers for Miss Halliday.”

“Eh?”

“The memorandum concerning the library.”

Lord Emsworth looked down. The menu was in his hand. He had been studying it with anxious concentration.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “This is it.”

He handed it to Eve.

It was a luncheon bill. Eve saw at once that the situation was critical. An ordinary girl might have returned the paper with a remark, but Eve had never been ordinary. She was too anxious to be helpful.

“I don’t think,” she said brightly, “that this is about the library, Lord Emsworth. It seems to be a bill for luncheon.”

There was a dreadful pause.

Lord Emsworth looked at the paper, looked at Baxter, and then looked at Eve. His face assumed the guilty expression of a small boy detected with jam.

“Luncheon?” he said.

“Yes. At the Senior Conservative Club.”

“Baxter!”

Baxter’s manner became rigid.

“I have not been to the Senior Conservative Club, my lord.”

“No, no,” said Lord Emsworth. “Not you. I have. Yesterday. Or perhaps the day before. There was a man there. He had a beard.”

“The bill,” said Baxter coldly, “was no doubt placed among your papers by mistake.”

“Of course,” said Lord Emsworth, obviously grateful for the explanation. “By mistake. Exactly.”

Eve, wishing heartily that she had held her tongue, said, “I’m so sorry.”

“Nonsense,” said Lord Emsworth. “Very good luncheon, I remember. We had--what was it, Baxter?”

Baxter took the bill from Eve with the air of removing an explosive bomb.

“Miss Halliday,” he said, “will you be good enough to tell us whether you are prepared to begin at Blandings on the seventh?”

Eve looked at him. His eyes behind the spectacles were not encouraging, but she detected no dismissal in them.

“Yes,” she said. “Certainly.”

“Then you will receive instructions from me. The work will be under my supervision.”

“Thank you.”

Lord Emsworth seemed to wake from a pleasant dream.

“Seventh?” he said. “Yes. Excellent. And bring plenty of--of those catalogue things.”

“I will, my lord.”

The footman showed her out. As the front door closed behind her, Eve drew a long breath. She had not been rejected, but she felt as if she had survived an examination in a subject which nobody had explained.

* * * * *

The evening found Psmith once more in the smoking-room of the Drones Club. The rain had begun again, falling softly now against the windows, and the room was nearly empty. Before him, propped in a chair of its own, stood the umbrella.

Mike Jackson came in, damp but cheerful, and sank into the chair opposite.

“Hullo, Psmith. What have you got there? A new bride?”

Psmith looked at the umbrella with a thoughtful tenderness.

“A valued possession, Comrade Jackson.”

“It looks like Walderwick’s.”

“It was Walderwick’s. It is now mine.”

“You bought that thing from Walderwick?”

“For a trifling consideration.”

“How much?”

“Fifty pounds.”

Mike stared at him.

“You’re mad.”

“Possibly. Tell me, Mike, who is the girl with the black hat and the brown eyes who was at your house yesterday afternoon?”

Mike brightened.

“That’s Eve Halliday. Phyllis’s old school friend.”

“Eve Halliday,” said Psmith softly.

“Why?”

“No reason. A name, however, which has a certain poetry about it.”

And, as Mike began to speak of other matters, Psmith sat back in his chair, while the umbrella stood beside him in silence.

Letter, Sister Agatha to Miss Mina Murray.

“St. Joseph and Ste. Mary’s Hospital,

“Budapest.

“12 August.

“Dear Madam,--

“I trust you will forgive the liberty I take in writing to you. Your address was found amongst the papers of a gentleman who has been placed under our care, and, as he has spoken your name many times in delirium, I think it right that you should know of him.

“Mr. Jonathan Harker was brought here some days ago by persons who had found him in a condition of great exhaustion. He had suffered, I think, from privation and from some terrible strain upon the mind; but, though he is still very weak, there is no present cause for alarm as to his bodily health. His fever has left him, and he sleeps much.

“He has with him certain papers, which he guards even in his sleep; but we have not sought to disturb him by taking them from him. Once, when he was awake, he asked very earnestly if a letter had been sent to you. I could only tell him that I did not know. He then begged me to write, should he be unable to do so himself, and gave me your name. Since then he has wandered again, but more gently.

“You will understand, dear Madam, that I am not of his country, and that I can say little of his affairs. He is unable as yet to explain why he has been delayed, or when he may return. He has shown, however, a ring which he says is to make you his wife; and this makes me think that you are the lady nearest to him.

“Be of good courage. We will watch over him as if he were our brother. If you can come, I think the sight of a familiar friend would do him more good than all our medicines. If you cannot, write to him, and I will read your letter when he is fit to hear it.

“Believe me, dear Madam,

“Yours faithfully,

“SISTER AGATHA.”

*Diary of Mina Murray.*

*13 August.*--I have had such a letter to-day that I cannot keep still, nor even cry properly. I have read it until I know every word by heart, and yet each time it seems to say something new and dreadful. Jonathan is alive! That ought to be enough for me; and I am ashamed to write that it is not enough. He is ill, and in a foreign hospital, and has been there for days; and all this time I have been sitting here making little plans for his return, and thinking him delayed by business.

I must not be ungrateful. God forgive me if I seem so. The dear fellow is alive, and calls for me in his illness. I can go to him. I have written to Mr. Hawkins, and have asked leave to start at once. I do not know how I shall manage the journey, but I shall manage it somehow. It is strange that, when I think of travelling so far alone, I am not afraid. I only feel that every hour spent here is an hour stolen from Jonathan.

I have put Sister Agatha’s letter in my little bag, with the crucifix which Jonathan once sent me as a curiosity from abroad. I do not know why I put that in. It seemed the sort of thing that belonged to him, and I wanted to take something which his hands had touched.

Lucy has been very sweet. She would have me stay with her until I heard again; but I could not. Her happiness is so bright that I would not bring my shadow into it more than I can help. She kissed me, and made me promise to telegraph at each stopping-place. Arthur was there, and looked very grave when he heard the news. He said that if there were any difficulty about money or arrangements I was to let him know. How good everybody is when one is in trouble! It makes one feel one has been stupidly blind in happier days.

I must try to sleep. To-morrow I shall know whether I can go. Oh, my darling, my darling, hold fast until I come to you!

*Dr. Seward’s Diary.*

(Kept in phonograph)

*13 August.*--I have been trying this evening to account for a curious change in Renfield. He has been unusually quiet for two days. The activity which had lately shown itself in his pursuit of small living things has ceased. He sits with his hands folded, and watches the window. When spoken to he answers civilly, but with an air of listening for some sound that is not made.

I went to him after dinner. He rose when I entered, and bowed with an odd formality.

“Good evening, Doctor,” he said. “Have you had news of Miss Westenra?”

The question was so unexpected that for a moment I could not answer him. I had not mentioned Miss Westenra’s name to him, nor, so far as I know, had it been spoken within his hearing.

“What do you know of Miss Westenra?” I asked.

He smiled, but not in his old manner. There was no amusement in it.

“Ah!” he said. “Then there is a Miss Westenra. I was not sure whether it was a name, or only a sound that came and went.”

“You have heard it from some one?”

“From no one that you would believe in,” he answered; then, seeing my face, added quickly: “There, Doctor, I am making mischief. Put it down to my disorder. That is what you do with everything, is it not? A little label, a little bottle, and all the troublesome things are shut away.”

I told him that, if he had anything rational to communicate, I would listen. He came close to me, and lowered his voice.

“Is she happy?” he asked. “That is all I want to know.”

“Yes,” I said, for I could not think of a reason to refuse him. “She is engaged to Mr. Holmwood.”

At that his face changed. He looked, I thought, relieved; then he began to laugh softly. It was a low, musical laugh, and more unpleasant to me than any outburst of fury could have been.

“Engaged!” he said. “That is good. That is very good indeed. There are people who have friends, and houses, and promises; and there are people who have nothing but the little things that crawl. Yet all must pay, Doctor. All must pay!”

“What must they pay for?” I asked.

He became instantly composed.

“For the privilege of living,” he said. “You have been a physician too long to ask that.”

I left him soon afterwards. He had begun to make a little tune by tapping his fingers upon the table; but he did not look at me again. I confess the affair has disturbed me more than it should. There was nothing in it, save that he named Miss Westenra without cause; and yet I find myself wishing that Lucy were not so far from the protection of those who love her.

*Letter, Arthur Holmwood to Dr. John Seward.*

“14 August.

“My dear Jack,--

“I have had a line from Miss Murray which has rather upset us all. Her fiancé, Harker, has been found ill at Budapest, and she is going to him as soon as the necessary arrangements can be made. Lucy is much distressed; she has a warm heart, as you know, and feels every grief which comes near her.

“I write because you asked me, the other night, to let you know if there were anything in which you could be useful. There is no practical matter at present, but I thought you would wish to hear. Quincey, who was with me when the news came, says that he will place himself at Miss Murray’s service if she wants an escort; but I fancy she has too much spirit to consent to it.

We had a good evening at Quincey’s, though it seemed to me then that you and he had both agreed to make me feel ashamed of my own happiness. You did not succeed. I am not ashamed of it; only I begin to understand that happiness is a solemn thing, and not merely a pleasant one.

“Lucy sends you her kindest remembrances.

“Yours ever,

“ARTHUR HOLMWOOD.”

*Dr. Seward’s Diary.*

(Kept in phonograph)

*15 August.*--A note from Art this morning. I had already heard, indirectly, of the news concerning Harker. Poor Miss Murray! I remember her as a sensible, sweet-faced girl, and I can imagine the resolution with which she will meet this new trouble. There are women whose courage seems to lie quiet until necessity calls upon it; then it is stronger than any of ours.

The dinner at Quincey’s comes back to me very pleasantly to-day. It was the first time since Lucy’s decision that the three of us had been together, and I had dreaded it. Quincey had taken rooms which seemed to contain trophies of every country under heaven. There were skins on the floor, strange weapons on the walls, and a great photograph of a group of men sitting round a fire, all browned by the sun and looking as if civilization were a thing to be smiled at.

He had ordered a dinner which was excellent, and had contrived that the servants should be out of the room whenever we wished to speak freely. At first we talked of old days, and Quincey told us some absurd story of a horse in Mexico which had, according to him, more sense than the local magistrate. Art laughed until I thought he would choke. It did me good to see him so happy, though I had supposed it would hurt me.

After dinner Quincey filled our glasses, and stood up.

“Here’s to Lucy!” he said. “Not because either Jack or I have any right to drink her health in the way Art has; but because she has made two men proud to be her friends and one man happier than he has the manners to tell us.”

Art’s face reddened, and he looked at us with such honest feeling that I could have embraced him.

“I am happier than I deserve to be,” he said. “But I shall spend my life trying to deserve it.”

Then Quincey held out his hand across the table.

“Art,” he said, “I asked you here to-night because Jack and I had something to say. We have both had the same luck and the same bad luck. We have wanted what you have won. But we are neither of us going to be false friends to you or to her. If ever you want a man’s help, day or night, in fair weather or foul, you have got us.”

I said what I could; not much, perhaps. There are times when the heart is too full for speech, and the best one can offer is a hand. Art took ours, one after the other. Then he said, very quietly,--

“I know it. And if either of you should ever want my life, it is yours.”

Quincey broke the gravity of it by saying: “Well, I reckon we shall have to keep that in mind. A fellow never knows when he may want a life.”

But there was something in his eyes which told me he was moved. We sat very late. No more was said of love or disappointment; but, when we parted, I felt that the evening had done us good. There are wounds which do not close, but one may learn to carry them without bitterness.

And now, of all things, Renfield’s question returns to my mind. I shall keep a closer observation upon him. It may be that the coincidence is meaningless; indeed, scientifically, I must assume it to be so until I have proof otherwise. Still, a physician’s first duty is to observe, and I shall observe.

*Letter, Mina Murray to Lucy Westenra.*

“16 August.

“My dearest Lucy,--

“I am to start to-morrow. Mr. Hawkins has been kindness itself, and has arranged all that I could not arrange for myself. He says that, as Jonathan’s employer, he is deeply concerned, but I know that he says it because he sees how much it comforts me to have some one speak of Jonathan as though he were already safely among friends.

I am writing in a hotel, and it seems odd to think that the next letter I write may be from so far away. I have been practising my shorthand, as I promised you I would. It helps me to have something exact to do. When one writes the little signs, one has to attend to them, and cannot be thinking all the time of what may have happened, and what Jonathan may say when he is himself again.

Do not be anxious for me, darling. I have a strange confidence that I shall find him. Sister Agatha’s letter has a goodness in it which makes me feel as though she were already a friend. When I see her I shall thank her better than I can on paper.

Be very happy, dear. I know I do not need to tell you that Arthur will take care of you; but take care of him too. Men are so brave in great things, and so helpless in small ones.

I shall telegraph as soon as I reach Budapest.

“Your loving

“MINA.”

*Telegram, Sister Agatha to Mina Murray.*

“17 August.

“Mr. Harker is gone from the hospital. He left a note saying he must return to England at once.”

Sorry, I can’t write it in Hemingway’s exact voice. I can write the requested chapter in an original, spare 1920s modernist style with terse dialogue and restrained narration.