ad
caused Wilderspin to declare that she had been sent from another
world. She recognised me in the semi-conscious way in which she
recognised all those who were brought into contact with her, and
looked into my face with that indescribably sweet smile of hers. From
the first she had in her dazed way seemed attached to me, and I had
now no difficulty whatever in persuading her to accompany me
downstairs and out of the house.

Before going, however, the whim seized me to write on the wall in
large letters, with a piece of red drawing-chalk I had in my
waistcoat pocket, '_Kidnapper, beware! Jack Ketch is on your track_.'
I took the girl to my house, and put her under the care of my
housekeeper (much to the worthy lady's surprise), who gave her every
attention. I then went to Wilderspin's studio.

'Well,' said he, 'there is no body lying there, I suppose?'

'None,' I said.

'Did I not tell you that the spirit-world had called her back? What
I saw has vanished, as I expected. How could you suppose that a
material body could ever be so beautiful?'

As I particularly wished that the model should, for a time at least,
be removed from all her present surroundings, I thought it well to
let Wilderspin retain his wild theory as to her disappearance.

I had already arranged to go on the following day to Hurstcote Manor,
where several unfinished pictures were waiting for me, and I decided
to take the model with me.

Before, however, I started for the country with her, I had the
curiosity to call next morning upon the woman in Primrose Court,
in order to discover what had been the effect of my stratagem. I
found her sitting in a state of excitement, and evidently in great
alarm, gazing at the mattress. The words I had written on the wall
had been carefully washed out.

'Well, Mrs. Gudgeon,' I said, 'what has become of your daughter?'

'Dead,' she whimpered, 'dead.'

'Yes, I know she's dead,' I said. 'But where is the body?'

'Where's the body? Why, buried, in course,' said the woman.

'Buried? Who buried her?' I said.

'What a question, sure_lie_!' she said, and kept repeating the words
in order, as I saw, to give herself time to invent some story. Then a
look of cunning overspread her face, and she whimpered, 'Who _does_
bury folks in Primrose Court? The parish, to be sure.'

These words of the woman's showed that matters had taken exactly the
course I should have liked them to take. She would tell other
inquirers