The persecution went on. It was
more terrible here than it had been in England. There I had friends. I
had hours, sometimes even whole days, to myself.

"But this was not the worst. A new phase developed. From his
appearance it suddenly became apparent to me that Reginald Maltravers
could not stop haunting me if he wished!"

"COULD not stop?" cried Cleggett.

"COULD not," said Lady Agatha. "The hunt had become a monomania with
him. It had become an obsession. He had given his whole mentality to
it and it had absorbed all his faculties. He was now the victim of it.
He had grown powerless in the grip of the idea; he had lost volition in
the matter.

"You can imagine my consternation when I realized this. I began to
fear the day when his insanity would take some violent form and he
would endeavor to do me a personal injury. I determined to have a
bodyguard. I wanted a man inured to danger; one capable of meeting
violence with violence, if the need arose. It struck me that if I
could get into touch with one of those chivalrous Western outlaws, of
whom we read in American works of fiction, he would be just the sort of
man I needed to protect me from Reginald Maltravers.

"I did not consider appealing to the authorities, for I have no
confidence in your American laws, Mr. Cleggett. But I did not know how
to go about finding a chivalrous Western outlaw. So finally I put an
advertisement in the personal column of one of your morning papers for
a reformed convict."

"A reformed convict!" exclaimed Cleggett. "May I ask how you worded the
ad.?"

"Ad.? Oh, advertisement? I will get it for you."

She went into the stateroom and was back in a moment with a newspaper
cutting which she handed to Cleggett. It read:

Convict recently released from Sing Sing, if his reform is really
genuine, may secure honest employment by writing to A. F., care Morning
Dispatch.

"Out of the answers," she resumed, "I selected four and had their
writers call for a personal interview. But only two of them seemed to
me to be really reformed, and of these two Elmer's reform struck me as
being the more genuine. You may have noticed that Elmer gives the
appearance of being done with worldly vanities."

"He does seem depressed," said Cleggett, "but I had imputed it largely
to the nature of his present occupation."

"It is due to his attempt to lead a better life--or at least so he
tells me," said Lady Agatha. "Morality does no