the field to
the little wicket. The confidence I had reposed in Mr. D'Arcy had
been like the confidence a child reposes in its father.

'"Miss Wynne," he said, in a voice full of emotion, "I feel that an
unlucky incident has come between us, and yet if I ever did anything
for your good, it was when I decided to postpone revealing the fact
that Sinfi Lovell was under this roof until her cure was so complete
and decisive that you could never by any chance receive the shock
that you have now received."

'I felt that my resentment was melting in the music of his words.

'"What caused the fits?" I said. "She talked about being under a
curse. What can it mean?"

'"That," he said, "is too long a story for me to tell you now."

'"I know," said I, "that some time ago the tomb of Mr. Aylwin's
father was violated by some undiscovered miscreant, and I know that
the words Sinfi uttered just now are the words of a curse written by
the dead man on a piece of parchment, and stolen with a jewel from
his tomb. I have seen the parchment itself, and I know the words
well. Her father, Panuel Lovell, is as innocent of the crime of
sacrilege as my poor father was. What could have made her suppose
that she had inherited the curse from her father?"

'"I have no explanation to offer," he said. "As you know so much of
the matter and I know so little, I am inclined to ask you for some
explanation of the puzzle."

'I thought over the matter for a minute, and then I said to him,
"Sinfi Lovell knows Raxton as well as Snowdon, and must have been
very familiar with the crime. I can only suppose that she has brooded
so long over the enormity of the offence and the appalling words of
the curse that she has actually come at last to believe that poor,
simple-minded Panuel Lovell is the offender, and that she, as his
child, has inherited the curse."

'"A most admirable solution of the mystery," he said, his face
beaming with delight.'

XII

When Winnie got to this point she said, 'Yes, Henry, poor Sinfi seems
in some unaccountable way to have learnt all about that piece of
parchment and the curse written upon it. She has been under the
extraordinary delusion that her own father, poor Panuel Lovell, was
the violator of the tomb, and that she has inherited the curse.'

'Good God, Winnie!' I exclaimed; and when I recalled what I had seen
of Sinfi in the cottage, I was racked with perplexity, pity, and
wonder. What could it mean?

'Yes,' said