aid she was a little better, and that she didn't know she had had
any coffee. That was the extent of the conversation. I, who have a local
reputation of a sort before a jury, I could not think of another word to
say. I stood there for a minute uneasily, with Edith poking me with her
finger to go inside the door and speak and act like an intelligent human
being. But I only muttered something about a busy day before me and
fled. It was a singular thing, but as I stood in the doorway, I had a
vivid mental picture of Edith's description of me, sitting up puppy-like
to beg for a kind word, and wiggling with delight when I got it. If I
slunk into my office that morning like a dog scourged to his kennel,
Edith was responsible.

At the office I found a note from Miss Letitia, and after a glance at it
I looked for the first train, in my railroad schedule. The note was
brief; unlike the similar epistle I had received from Miss Jane the day
she disappeared, this one was very formal.

"MR. JOHN KNOX:

"DEAR SIR--Kindly oblige me by coming to see me as soon as you
get this. Some things have happened, not that I think they are
worth a row of pins, but Hepsibah is an old fool, and she says
she did not put the note in the milk bottle.

"Yours very respectfully,

"LETITIA ANN MAITLAND."

I had an appointment with Burton for the afternoon, to take Wardrop, if
we could get him on some pretext, to Doctor Anderson. That day, also, I
had two cases on the trial list. I got Humphreys, across the hall, to
take them over, and evading Hawes' resentful blink, I went on my way to
Bellwood. It was nine days since Miss Jane had disappeared. On my way
out in the train I jotted down the things that had happened in that
time: Allan Fleming had died and been buried; the Borough Bank had
failed; some one had got into the Fleming house and gone through the
papers there; Clarkson had killed himself; we had found that Wardrop had
sold the pearls; the leather bag had been returned; Fleming's second
wife had appeared, and some one had broken into my own house and,
intentionally or not, had almost sent Margery Fleming over the
borderland.

It seemed to me everything pointed in one direction, to a malignity
against Fleming that extended itself to the daughter. I thought of what
the woman who claimed to be the dead man's second wife had said the day
before. If the staircase she had spoken of opened into the room where
Fle