hat to kill a fly has become a crime even if it is to save oneself from
poison. I'm going to see if I cannot make folks blink askance at some
other man than me. I'm going to find out who or what causes these
disappearances."

This was a declaration to make us all stare and look a little bit
foolish. William playing the detective! Well, what might I not live to
see next! But the next moment an overpowering thought struck me. Might
this Deacon Spear by any chance be the rich man whose animosity Althea
Knollys had awakened?

_BOOK IV_

THE BIRDS OF THE AIR

XXXIII

LUCETTA

The next morning I rose with the lark. I had slept well, and all my old
vigor had returned. A new problem was before me; a problem of surpassing
interest, now that the Knollys family had been eliminated from the list
of persons regarded with suspicion by the police. Mother Jane and the
jewels were to be Mr. Gryce's starting-point for future investigation.
Should they be mine? My decision on this point halted, and thinking it
might be helped by a breath of fresh air, I decided upon an early stroll
as a means of settling this momentous question.

There was silence in the house when I passed through it on my way to the
front door. But that silence had lost its terrors and the old house its
absorbing mystery. Yet it was not robbed of its interest. When I
realized that Althea Knollys, the Althea of my youth, had just died
within its walls as ignorant of my proximity as I of hers, I felt that
no old-time romance, nor any terror brought by flitting ghost or
stalking apparition, could compare with the wonder of this return and
the strange and thrilling circumstances which had attended it. And the
end was not yet. Peaceful as everything now looked, I still felt that
the end had not come.

The fact that Saracen was loose in the yard gave me some slight concern
as I opened the great front door and looked out. But the control under
which I had held him the day before encouraged me in my venture, and
after a few words with Hannah, who was careful not to let me slip away
unnoticed, I boldly stepped forth and took my solitary way down to the
gate.

It was not yet eight, and the grass was still heavy with dew. At the
gate I paused. I wished to go farther, but Mr. Gryce's injunction had
been imperative about venturing into the lane alone. Besides--No, that
was not a horse's hoof. There could be no one on the road so early as
this. I was alarmi