pect
offered attractions. The start was to be made from Plymouth on a summer
afternoon. We were to cruise along the coast, and eventually make for
Jersey and Guernsey, where none of the party had ever been. My things
were packed, and I was ready to take a morning train for Plymouth--a
train by which all those of us in town would travel--when a letter
arrived for me. It was from Mrs. Barlow, announcing the sudden death of
her husband, from heart failure. He had never recovered the shock of the
robbery, or the heavy dose of chloroform which the thieves had
administered. And this, Barley added, as if in reproach, was not all
Barlow had been forced to endure. It had been a cruel blow to find
himself supplanted as guardian at the Abbey. The excuse for thus
superseding him and his wife was, of course, the state of their health
after the ordeal through which they had passed. Nevertheless, Barlow
felt (said his wife) that they were no longer trusted. They had loved
the lodge, which was home to them in old days; but they had been
promoted from lodge-keeping to caretaking, and it was humiliating to be
sent back while strangers usurped their place at the Abbey. This
grievance (in Barley's opinion) had killed her husband. As for her, she
would follow him into the grave, were it not for the loving care of
Barlow's nephews from Australia, the brave twin soldier boys she had
often mentioned to me. They were with her now, and would take her to the
old family home close to Dudworth Cove, which the boys had bought back
from the late owner. Barlow's body would go with them, and be buried in
the graveyard where generations of Barlows slept.

It was a blow to hear of the old man's death, and to learn that I was
blamed for heartlessness by Barley. Of course I had nothing to do with
the affair. The Barlows were not really suspected, and had in truth been
removed for their own health's sake to the lodge where their possessions
were. The new caretakers had been engaged by Sir James, in consultation,
I believed, with the insurance people: and my secret conviction was,
that they had been supplied by Pemberton's Agency of Private Detectives.
My impulse was to rush to the Abbey and comfort Mrs. Barlow, even at the
risk of meeting my tenant engaged in the same task. But to do this would
have meant delaying the trip, and disappointing everyone, most of all
Shelagh and Roger Fane; so, advised by Mrs. Carstairs, I sent a telegram
instead, picked up She