here nor sent here. It's a forgery, an impudent forgery."

"Let us take it down and carry it back with us," said the lawyer.

"Na, na, my lad; we maun just wait till we come in force."

"Time to 'bout ship," growled the Captain.

"Hush!" whispered the minister, "I hear a voice, a woman's voice."

"Come on!" said the lawyer, jumping ashore; "will you come, Ben?"

"Don't ask me that, Doctor, I dassent," replied Toner, shivering with
superstitious fear.

"Let me go with him," said the minister to the Captain; "we'll not be a
minute away."

"Look sharp, then!" growled Mr. Thomas. "Are you loaded?"

The two explorers looked to their revolvers, and then climbed the bank,
which was no easy task, as it was a mass of felled timber and dead
brush; but the notes of a woman's voice led them on, and, at last, they
found themselves on the shore of the fourth lake. They saw nothing, so
they crouched down listening for the voice.

"Steve, Stevy dear, wake up and let us go away. Oh, why are you sleeping
when every moment is precious? He will come, Stevy, I know he will, and
kill you, dear!" The voice was very near. Simultaneously the intruders
looked up the bank, and, at the foot of a standing hemlock, saw a woman,
with gray hair hanging loose over her shoulders, who knelt by a
recumbent figure. "Steve, dear brother," she continued, "do wake up! You
used to be so good and sensible." Coristine crept nearer behind some
bushes till he was within a very short distance of the pair. With a
white, sad face, trembling in every limb, he came back as silently to
the minister, and whispered: "It's poor Nash, and she calls him brother;
Mr. Errol, he's murdered, he's dead." The warm-hearted Errol, who had
come out to look after the detective's safety, at once became a hero.

"Bide you there, Coristine," he said, "bide there till I call you." Then
he arose and went to the spot, but the woman, though he was in full
view, took no notice of him. He stooped and touched her. For a moment
she shrank, then looked up and saw it was not the person she dreaded.
"Matilda Nagle," whispered the minister, "we must get poor Steevie away
from here." Then he saw that her intellect was gone; no wonder that she
was the mother of an idiot boy. "Oh, I am so glad you have come, Mr.
Inglis," she cried, softly; "won't you try and wake Stevy, perhaps he
will mind you better than me." The minister brushed the tears from his
eyes, and strove to keep the sobs out of