rain had given way under the strain of
mental torture," he said. "You were half delirious already. If you
had not been you would have stayed and fought it out. You were in a
hospital, strapped down in bed, raving with brain fever, two days after
you left the place. Remember that."

Carrisford dropped his forehead in his hands.

"Good God! Yes," he said. "I was driven mad with dread and horror. I
had not slept for weeks. The night I staggered out of my house all the
air seemed full of hideous things mocking and mouthing at me."

"That is explanation enough in itself," said Mr. Carmichael. "How
could a man on the verge of brain fever judge sanely!"

Carrisford shook his drooping head.

"And when I returned to consciousness poor Crewe was dead--and buried.
And I seemed to remember nothing. I did not remember the child for
months and months. Even when I began to recall her existence
everything seemed in a sort of haze."

He stopped a moment and rubbed his forehead. "It sometimes seems so
now when I try to remember. Surely I must sometime have heard Crewe
speak of the school she was sent to. Don't you think so?"

"He might not have spoken of it definitely. You never seem even to
have heard her real name."

"He used to call her by an odd pet name he had invented. He called her
his 'Little Missus.' But the wretched mines drove everything else out
of our heads. We talked of nothing else. If he spoke of the school, I
forgot--I forgot. And now I shall never remember."

"Come, come," said Carmichael. "We shall find her yet. We will
continue to search for Madame Pascal's good-natured Russians. She
seemed to have a vague idea that they lived in Moscow. We will take
that as a clue. I will go to Moscow."

"If I were able to travel, I would go with you," said Carrisford; "but
I can only sit here wrapped in furs and stare at the fire. And when I
look into it I seem to see Crewe's gay young face gazing back at me.
He looks as if he were asking me a question. Sometimes I dream of him
at night, and he always stands before me and asks the same question in
words. Can you guess what he says, Carmichael?"

Mr. Carmichael answered him in a rather low voice.

"Not exactly," he said.

"He always says, 'Tom, old man--Tom--where is the Little Missus?'" He
caught at Carmichael's hand and clung to it. "I must be able to answer
him--I must!" he said. "Help me to find her. Help me."

On the other side of the w