at the mystery
had gone home to him more fully than to any one else--and we all wished
that he could be spared the tragic, vain hour of search that awaited us.
Because none of us had the least hope, in our own hearts, that we would
ever see Major Dell again. We had got past the point where we could
deceive ourselves. The truth was all too self-evident. We would search
through the grounds, as a matter of duty we would call and run back and
forth. But the end was already sure.

Indeed, there was no look of surprise on any one of those white faces.
Rather they had a helpless, almost fatalistic expression, as men have
when at last they are crushed to earth by the inevitable. I have heard a
detachment of soldiers, seemingly trapped by death, speak in the same
quiet way, and have seen the same baffled, resigned expression on their
faces.

I didn't try to keep track of who was there and who was absent. It was
impossible to think of such things now. But bitter, blasting fear surged
through me when I thought of Edith--wondering if she was safe in her
room.

There was a moment of stress, a sudden, momentary explosion of
suppressed excitement, when Slatterly the sheriff joined us in the hall.
We heard his running feet in the corridor, and we turned to watch him,
his dressing-gown flopping about him. Evidently he had heard our words
from his room in the upper corridor. Certain exclamations were on his
lips--whether they were profane oaths I do not know.

"What is it?" he demanded in an irritable, rasping voice. "Why are you
all gathered here?"

Silently we waited for Nopp to speak--Nopp who had become the strongest
arm in the affair. "We're not having any late evening gossip," he
answered. "Kastle Krags has its tail up again. We're here--to find out
what has become of Major Dell."

"Major Dell! Good God, don't tell me he's gone too."

Instantly the sudden, deadly surge of wrath we had all felt toward the
sheriff died in our breasts. That cry he made, the hopeless, defeated
way in which he spoke, made him, in an instant, one of us--subject to
the same fear and despair, a crushed and impotent human being like
ourselves.

"He's gone," Nopp told him quietly. "He's not in his room. He doesn't
seem to be any place else."

"Have you searched? I don't suppose there's any use of it, but we've got
to search. Oh, why didn't I guard him--why did I ever take such a
criminal risk!"

None of us could forget his rugged, brown face in