disordered hair, she turned and
disappeared through the door from which she had rushed.

"My daughter," murmured the vicar, a little sadly, Malcolm Sage
thought. "She has always been very highly strung and emotional," he
added, as if considering some explanation necessary. "We have to be
very stern with her on such occasions. It is the only way to repress
it."

"You find it answers?" remarked Malcolm Sage.

"She has been much better lately, although she has been sorely tried.
Perhaps you have heard."

Malcolm Sage nodded absently, as he gazed intently at the thumb-nail
of his right hand. A minute later he was walking down the drive, his
thoughts occupied with the pretty daughter of the vicar of Gylston.

At the curate's lodgings he was told that Mr. Blade was away, and
would not return until late that night.

As he turned from the gate, Malcolm Sage encountered a pale-faced,
narrow-shouldered man with a dark moustache and a hard, peevish
mouth.

To Malcolm Sage's question as to which was the way to the inn, he
nodded in the direction from which he had come and continued on his
way.

"A man who has failed in what he set out to accomplish," was Malcolm
Sage's mental diagnosis of John Gray, the Gylston schoolmaster.

It was not long before Malcolm Sage realised that the village of
Gylston was intensely proud of itself. It had seen in the London
papers accounts of the mysterious scandal of which it was the centre.
A Scotland Yard officer had been down, and had subjected many of the
inhabitants to a careful cross-examination. In consequence Gylston
realised that it was a village to be reckoned with.

The Tired Traveller was the centre of all rumour and gossip. Here
each night in the public-bar, or in the private-parlour, according
to their social status, the inhabitants would forgather and discuss
the problem of the mysterious letters. Every sort of theory was
advanced, and every sort of explanation offered. Whilst popular
opinion tended to the view that the curate was the guilty party,
there were some who darkly shook their heads and muttered, "We shall
see."

It was remembered and discussed with relish that John Gray, the
schoolmaster, had for some time past shown a marked admiration for
the vicar's daughter. She, however, had made it clear that the
cadaverous, saturnine pedagogue possessed for her no attractions.

During the half-hour that Malcolm Sage spent at The Tired Traveller,
eating a hurried meal,