ung
women would have done. I'm not going to have you persecuted and
harassed--not one minute! Where is this fellow stopping?"

The daughter shook her head. "I don't know. He gave me his card, but it
has the New Orleans address only."

"Give it to me and I'll look him up to-morrow."

The card changed hands, and for a few minutes neither of them spoke.
Then the daughter began again.

"I've had another shock this evening, too," she said, speaking this time
in low tones and with eyes downcast. "This Mr. Griswold: tell me all you
know about him, father."

"I don't know much of anything more than--thanks to Miss Grierson--all
the town knows. They brought him here sick--she and her father--as I
told you. That was some little time before you came home; perhaps while
you were still on the way up the river. They didn't know who he was; and
oddly enough, there wasn't anything in his clothes or luggage to tell
them. I know that to be a fact because, at Miss Margery's request, I
helped her overhaul his belongings. Afterward, in a talk with him, I
learned that he had been robbed on the train; or at least, that was the
supposition. He said there was money in one of the suit-cases, and we
didn't find any."

"He is an author, they say; I don't seem to recall his name in any of my
reading."

The doctor laughed good-naturedly. "Perhaps he is only one of the
would-be's; I don't think it has got much farther than the hankering, as
yet. There was a book manuscript in one of his valises, and I read a
little of it. It was pretty poor stuff, I thought. But what was your
other shock?"

"It was at the dinner-table; when you were joking him about the
come-down from Mereside to us. Something he said--I couldn't remember, a
minute afterward, just what it was--was spoken exactly in the voice, and
with the same little trick of conciseness, as something that was said to
me that never-to-be-forgotten evening on the saloon-deck promenade of
the _Belle Julie_ ... said by the man whose name was _not_ John Wesley
Gavitt."

"Oh, my dear girl!" was the father's instant protest; "that couldn't be,
you know!"

"I know it couldn't," was the fair-minded rejoinder. "And I kept on
telling myself so all the evening. I had to, father; for that once at
the table wasn't the only time. Every few minutes he would say something
to bring back that haunting half-recollection. It is only a coincidence,
of course; it couldn't be anything else. But when he went a