irst fact was this. He found among the copies of the city newspaper
they took at The Poplars a recent number from which a square had been cut
out. He procured another copy of this paper of the same date, and found
that the piece cut out was an advertisement to the effect that the A 1
Ship Swordfish, Captain Hawkins, was to sail from Boston for Calcutta, on
the 20th of June.

The second fact was the following. On the window-sill of her little
hanging chamber, which the women allowed him to inspect, he found some
threads of long, black, glossy hair caught by a splinter in the wood.
They were Myrtle's of course. A simpleton might have constructed a
tragedy out of this trivial circumstance,--how she had cast herself from
the window into the waters beneath it,--how she had been thrust out after
a struggle, of which this shred from her tresses was the dreadful
witness,--and so on. Murray Bradshaw did not stop to guess and wonder.
He said nothing about it, but wound the shining threads on his finger,
and, as soon as he got home, examined them with a magnifier. They had
been cut off smoothly, as with a pair of scissors. This was part of a
mass of hair, then, which had been shorn and thrown from the window.
Nobody would do that but she herself. What would she do it for? To
disguise her sex, of course. The other inferences were plain enough.

The wily young man put all these facts and hints together, and concluded
that he would let the rustics drag the ponds and the river, and scour the
woods and swamps, while he himself went to the seaport town from which
she would without doubt sail if she had formed the project he thought on
the whole most probable.

Thus it was that we found him hurrying to the nearest station to catch
the train to Boston, while they were all looking for traces of the
missing girl nearer home. In the cars he made the most suggestive
inquiries he could frame, to stir up the gentlemanly conductor's memory.
Had any young fellow been on the train within a day or two, who had
attracted his notice? Smooth, handsome face, black eyes, short black
hair, new clothes, not fitting very well, looked away when he paid his
fare, had a soft voice like a woman's,--had he seen anybody answering to
some such description as this? The gentlemanly conductor had not
noticed,--was always taking up and setting down way-passengers,--might
have had such a young man aboard,--there was two or three students one
day in the