king off the thumb of his other hand.
"Twenty-five or six years after the registration of the child David
Rossi in Rome, a man, apparently twenty-five or six years of age, giving
the name of David Rossi, arrived in England from America. He called at a
baker's shop in Soho to ask for Roma Roselli, the daughter of Doctor
Roselli, left behind in London when the exile returned to Italy. They
told him that Roma Roselli was dead and buried."

Roma's face, which had been pale until now, began to glow like a fire on
a gloomy night, and her foot beat faster and faster.

"Fact seven. David Rossi appeared in Rome, first as a waiter at the
Grand Hotel, but soon afterwards as a journalist and public lecturer,
propounding precisely the same propaganda as that of David Leone in New
York, and exciting the same interest."

"Well? What of it?" said Roma. "David Leone was David Leone, and David
Rossi is David Rossi--there is no more in it than that."

The Baron clasped his hands so tight that his knuckles cracked, and
said, in a slightly exalted tone:

"Eighth and last fact. About that time a man called at the office of the
Campo Santo to know where he was to find the grave of Leonora Leone, the
woman who had drowned herself in the Tiber twenty-six years before. The
pauper trench had been dug up over and over again in the interval, but
the officials gave him their record of the place where she had once been
buried. He had the spot measured off for him, and he went down on his
knees before it. Hours passed, and he was still kneeling there. At
length night fell, and the officers had to warn him away."

Roma's foot had ceased to beat on the floor, and she was rising in her
chair.

"That man," said the Baron, "the only human being who ever thought it
worth while to look up the grave of the poor suicide, Leonora Rossi, the
mother of David Leone, was David Rossi! Who was David Leone?--David
Rossi! Who was David Rossi?--David Leone! The circle had closed around
him--the evidence was complete."

"Oh! oh! oh!"

Roma had leapt up and was moving about the room. Her lips were
compressed with scorn, her eyes were flashing, and she burst into a
torrent of words, which spluttered out of her quivering lips.

"Oh, to think of it! To think of it! You are right! The man who spends
his life looking for crime must have the soul of a criminal! He has no
conscience, no humanity, no mercy, no pity. And when he has tracked and
dogged a man to his moth