girl. "I should have thought that the Glencardine papers would have
referred to it," she added, recollecting what Walter had told her.

"Well, they don't; so why worry your head, dear, over a mere fable? I
have already gone very carefully into all the facts that are proved, and
have come to the conclusion that the story of the torture of his
Eminence is a fairy-tale, and that the supernatural Whispers have only
been heard in imagination."

She was silent. She recollected that sound of murmuring voices. It was
certainly not imagination.

"But you'll let me have the key of the cabinet, won't you, dad?" she
asked, glancing across to where stood a beautiful old Florentine cabinet
of ebony inlaid with ivory, and reaching almost to the ceiling.

"Certainly, Gabrielle dear," was the reply of the expressionless man.
"It is upstairs in my room. You shall have it to-morrow."

And then he lapsed again into silence, reflecting whether it were not
best to secure certain parchment records from those drawers before his
daughter investigated them. There was a small roll of yellow parchment,
tied with modern tape, which he was half-inclined to conceal from her
curious gaze. Truth to tell, they constituted a record of the torture
and death of Cardinal Setoun much in the same manner as Walter Murie had
described to her. If she read that strange chronicle she might, he
feared, be impelled to watch and endeavour to hear the fatal Whispers.

Strange though it was, yet those sounds were a subject which caused him
daily apprehension. Though he never referred to them save to ridicule
every suggestion of their existence, or to attribute the weird noises to
the wind, yet never a day passed but he sat calmly reflecting. That one
matter which his daughter knew above all others caused him the most
serious thought and apprehension--a fear which had become doubly
increased since she had referred to the curious and apparently
inexplicable phenomenon. He, a refined, educated man of brilliant
attainments, scouted the idea of any supernatural agency. To those who
had made mention of the Whispers--among them his friend Murie, the Laird
of Connachan; Lord Strathavon, from whom he had purchased the estate;
and several of the neighbouring landowners--he had always expressed a
hope that one day he might be fortunate enough to hear the whispered
counsel of the Evil One, and so decide for himself its true cause. He
pretended always to treat the affair with