glad to have it."

"I don't know, sir." The woman was really very much embarrassed. She was
honest to the core, and though she enjoyed seeing her goods disappear
from the shelves, it wasn't in her heart to take advantage of a man so
old as this. "I'm afraid she wouldn't be pleased. You see, it isn't a
fortnight since she bought and made up the one I sold her first, and she
thought that a great extravagance. Now with the gray----"

"Are you speaking of the blue one?"

"No, it wasn't blue."

"What color was it? Haven't you a bit left to show me? I should know
better what to do, then."

She pointed to a bolt of striped wool--a little gaudy for a woman whose
taste they had both been speaking of as inclined to the plain and somber.

"That? But that's bright enough. I've never seen her in that."

"She didn't like it. But something made her take it. She wore it when she
came in last."

"She did! Then I'm satisfied. Thankee all the same. Just give me a pair
of gloves for her, and I'll be getting on."

She picked out a pair for him, and he trotted away, mumbling cheerily to
himself as he passed between the counters. But once in his taxi again,
he concentrated all his thought on that bolt of striped dress-goods. The
colors were crimson and black, with a dot here and there of some lighter
shade! He took pains to fix it in his mind, for this was undoubtedly the
dress she fled in--an important clue to him, if this hunt should resolve
itself into a chase with doubling and redoubling of the escaping quarry.

He spent the next two hours in acquainting himself with the location and
some of the conditions of the town he now meant to visit. Though he could
not understand Madame Duclos' reason for taking the name of a woman so
well known as this Elvira Brown, there was something in this circumstance
and the fact that the person so styled had been at that moment at the
point of death, which called, as he felt, for personal investigation. He
hardly felt fit for any such purely speculative expedition as this;
especially as he must do without the companionship, to say nothing of the
assistance, of Sweetwater, whom he hardly felt justified in withdrawing
from the task he had given him. So he picked out a fellow named Perry;
and together they took the West Shore into Greene County, where they
stopped at a station from which a branch road ran to the small town
whither the package addressed to Elvira Brown had preceded them.

Acciden