! no!"--that brain fever was feared and that
increased excitement might be fatal.

Another bar to progress! He had hoped to help her memory into supplying
him with a fact which would greatly simplify a task whose anomalies
secretly alarmed him. She had been in a fair state of mind before her
nerve was attacked by the event which robbed the little Angeline of life
and herself of reason, and if carefully approached, might possibly recall
some of the impressions made upon her previous to that moment. If, for
instance, she could describe even in a general way the appearance of any
person she may have seen advancing in the direction of the northern
gallery at the moment she herself turned to enter the southern one, what
a stability it would give to his theory, and what certainty to his future
procedure!

But he must wait for this, as he must wait for Angeline's story from
Madame Duclos. Meantime, a word with Sweetwater--after which, rest.

It was Mr. Gryce's custom, especially when engaged upon a case of marked
importance, to receive this, his recognized factotum, in his own home. No
prying ears, no watchful eyes, were to be feared there. He was the
absolute master of everything, even of Sweetwater, he sometimes thought.
For this young fellow loved him--had reason to; and when Sweetwater
played the violin, as he sometimes did after one of their long talks, the
aged detective came as near happiness as he ever did, now that his little
grandchild was married and had gone with her husband to the other side of
the world.

To-night he was not anticipating any such relaxation as this, yet to
Sweetwater, arriving later than he wished, he had never looked more in
need of it, as, sitting in his old and somewhat dingy library, he mused
over some little object he held in his half-closed palm, with an intent,
care-worn gaze which it distressed his young subordinate to see.
Uncertainty incites the young and fires them to action; but it wearies
the old and saps what little strength they have; and Sweetwater detected
uncertainty in his patron's troubled brow and prolonged stare at the
insignificant article absorbing his attention.

However, Gryce roused quickly at the young detective's cheery greeting,
and looking up with an answering welcome, plunged at once into business.

"So you have seen Turnbull! What did the man say?"

"That it was the left-hand upper corner of the tapestry he saw shaking,
and not the right-hand one as we had