are all these men about here
fools! It is in your house----"

"Hush!" she cried, her slight figure rising till we forgot it was the
feeble Lucetta we were gazing at. "No more accusations directed against
us. It is you who must expect them now. Mr. Trohm, your evil practices
are discovered. To-morrow you will have the police here in earnest. They
did but play with you when they were here before."

"You child!" he gasped, striving, however, to restrain all evidences of
shock and terror. "Why, who was it called in the police and set them
working in Lost Man's Lane? Was it not I----"

"Yes, that they might not suspect you, and perhaps that they might
suspect us. But it was useless, Obadiah Trohm. Althea Knollys' children
have been long-suffering, but the limit of their forbearance has been
reached. When you laid your hand upon my lover, you roused a spirit in
me that nothing but your own destruction can satisfy. Where is he, Mr.
Trohm? and where is Silly Rufus and all the rest who have vanished
between Deacon Spear's house and the little home of the cripples on the
highroad? They have asked me this question, but if any one in Lost Man's
Lane can answer, it is you, persecutor of my mother, and traducer of
ourselves, whom I here denounce in face of these skies where God reigns
and this earth where man lives to harry and condemn."

And then I saw that the instinct of this girl had accomplished what our
united acumen and skill had failed to do. The old man--indeed he seemed
an old man now--cringed, and the wrinkles came out in his face till he
was demoniacally ugly.

"You viper!" he shrieked. "How dare you accuse me of crime--you whose
mother would have died in jail but for my forbearance? Have you ever
seen me set my foot upon a worm? Look at my fruit and flowers, look at
my home, without a spot or blemish to mar its neatness and propriety.
Can a man who loves these things stomach the destruction of a man, much
less of a silly, yawping boy? Lucetta, you are mad!"

"Mad or sane, my accusation will have its results, Mr. Trohm. I believe
too deeply in your guilt not to make others do so."

"Ah," said he, "then you have not done so yet? You believe this and
that, but you have not told any one what your suspicions are?"

"No," she calmly returned, though her face blanched to the colorlessness
of wax, "I have not said what I think of you yet."

Oh, the cunning that crept into his face!

"She has not said. Oh, the little L