cking the door and holding it open for
them to look inside. "You see it no more answers the young lady's
description than the others do. And I haven't another to show you. You
have seen all those in front, and this is the last one in the rear.
You'll have to believe our story. The old lady never put foot in this
tavern."

The two men he addressed peered into the shadowy recesses before them,
and one of them, a tall and uncommonly good-looking young man of
stalwart build and unusually earnest manner, stepped softly inside. He
was a gentleman farmer living near, recently appointed deputy sheriff on
account of a recent outbreak of horse-stealing in the neighbourhood.

"I observe," he remarked, after a hurried glance about him, "that the
paper on these walls is not at all like that she describes. She was very
particular about the paper; said that it was of a muddy pink colour and
had big scrolls on it which seemed to move and crawl about in whirls as
you looked at it. This paper is blue and striped. Otherwise----"

"Let's go below," suggested his companion, who, from the deference with
which his most casual word was received, was evidently a man of some
authority. "It's cold here, and there are several new questions I should
like to put to the young lady. Mr. Quimby,"--this to the landlord, "I've
no doubt you are right, but we'll give this poor girl another chance. I
believe in giving every one the utmost chance possible."

"My reputation is in your hands, Coroner Golden," was the quiet reply.
Then, as they both turned, "my reputation against the word of an
obviously demented girl."

The words made their own echo. As the third man moved to follow the
other two into the hall, he seemed to catch this echo, for he
involuntarily cast another look behind him as if expectant of some
contradiction reaching him from the bare and melancholy walls he was
leaving. But no such contradiction came. Instead, he appeared to read
confirmation there of the landlord's plain and unembittered statement.
The dull blue paper with its old-fashioned and uninteresting stripes
seemed to have disfigured the walls for years. It was not only grimy
with age, but showed here and there huge discoloured spots, especially
around the stovepipe-hole high up on the left-hand side. Certainly he
was a dreamer to doubt such plain evidences as these. Yet----

Here his eye encountered Quimby's, and pulling himself up short, he
hastily fell into the wake of his