it from her than I had from the cat. So I prepared to go back
to the city, with the mystery unsolved. It seemed a pity, when I had got
so far with it. I had reconstructed a situation out of such bricks as
I had, the books in the cellar, Mrs. Graves's story of the river, the
confession, possibly the note-book and the handkerchief. I had even some
material left over in the form of the night intruder, who may or may not
have been the doctor. And then, having got so far, I had had to stop for
lack of other bricks.

A day or two before I went back to the city, Maggie came to me with a
folded handkerchief in her hand.

"Is that yours?" she asked.

I disclaimed it. It was not very fine, and looked rather yellow.

"S'got a name on it," Maggie volunteered. "Wright, I think it is.
'Tain't hers, unless she's picked it up somewhere. It's just come out of
the wash."

Maggie's eyes were snapping with suspicion. "There ain't any Wrights
around here, Miss Agnes," she said. "I sh'd say she's here under a false
name. Wright's likely hers."

In tracing the mystery of the confession, I find that three apparently
disconnected discoveries paved the way to its solution. Of these the
handkerchief came first.

I was inclined to think that in some manner the handkerchief I had found
in the book in the cellar had got into the wash. But it was where I had
placed it for safety, in the wall-closet in the library. I brought it
out and compared the two. They were unlike, save in the one regard. The
name "Wright" was clear enough on the one Maggie had found. With it as a
guide, the other name was easily seen to be the same. Moreover, both had
been marked by the same hand.

Yet, on Anne Bullard being shown the one Maggie had found, she
disclaimed it. "Don't you think some one dropped it at the funeral?" she
asked.

But I thought, as I turned away, that she took a step toward me. When I
stopped, however, and faced about, she was intent on something outside
the window.

And so it went. I got nowhere. And now, by way of complication, I felt
my sympathy for Anne's loneliness turning to genuine interest. She was
so stoical, so repressed, and so lonely. And she was tremendously
proud. Her pride was vaguely reminiscent of Miss Emily's. She bore her
ostracism almost fiercely, yet there were times when I felt her eyes on
me, singularly gentle and appealing. Yet she volunteered nothing about
herself.

I intended to finish the history of Bolivar Cou