It was decided not to report progress to old Agricola, but to wait and
seek further developments. Agricola, having lost all ability to sleep in
the mansion, moved into a small cottage in a grove near the house. But
the very next morning, he turned cold with horror to find on his
doorstep a small black-coffined doll, with pins run through the heart, a
burned-out candle at the head and another at the feet.

"You know it is Palmyre, do you?" asked Agamemnon, seizing the old man
as he was going at a headlong pace through the garden gate. "What if I
should tell you that by watching the Congo dancing-ground at midnight
to-night, you will see the real author of this mischief--eh?"

"And why to-night?"

"Because the moon rises at midnight."

There was firing that night in the deserted Congo dancing-grounds under
the ruins of Fort St. Joseph, or, as we would say now, in Congo Square,
from three pistols--Agricola's, 'Polyte's, and the weapon of an
ill-defined, retreating figure answering the description of the person
who had stabbed Agricola the preceding February. "And yet," said
'Polyte, "I would have sworn that it was Palmyre doing this work."

Through Raoul these events came to the ear of Frowenfield. It was about
the time that Raoul's fishing party, after a few days' mishaps, had
returned home. Palmyre, on several later dates, had craved further
audiences and shown other letters from the hidden f.m.c. She had heard
them calmly, and steadfastly preserved the one attitude of refusal. But
it could not escape Frowenfeld's notice that she encouraged the sending
of additional letters. He easily guessed the courier to be Clemence; and
now, as he came to ponder these revelations of Raoul, he found that
within twenty-four hours after every visit of Clemence to the house of
Palmyre, Agricola suffered a visitation.

CHAPTER LV

CAUGHT

The fig-tree, in Louisiana, sometimes sheds its leaves while it is yet
summer. In the rear of the Grandissme mansion, about two hundred yards
northwest of it and fifty northeast of the cottage in which Agricola had
made his new abode, on the edge of the grove of which we have spoken,
stood one of these trees, whose leaves were beginning to lie thickly
upon the ground beneath it. An ancient and luxuriant hedge of
Cherokee-rose started from this tree and stretched toward the northwest
across the level country, until it merged into the green confusion of
gardened homes in the vicinity of B