of hurried search had given
proofs of being in some one's hand within a very short period. The
attention I had given it at a moment of such haste was necessarily
cursory, and when later a second opportunity was granted me of
looking into it again, I had allowed a very slight obstacle to
deter me. This was a mistake I was anxious to rectify. Anything
which had been touched with purpose at or near the time of so
mysterious a tragedy,--and the position of this book on a shelf so
high that a chair was needed to reach it proved that it had been
sought and touched with purpose, held out the promise of a clue which
one on so blind a trail as myself could not afford to ignore.

But when I had taken the book down and read again its totally
uninteresting and unsuggestive title and, by another reference to
its dim and faded leaves, found that my memory had not played me
false and that it contained nothing but stupid and wholly irrelevant
statistics, my confidence in it as a possible aid in the work I had
in hand departed just as it had on the previous occasion. I was
about to put it back on the shelf, when I bethought me of running
my hand in behind the two books between which it had stood. Ah!
that was it! Another book lay flat against the wall at the back of
the shelf; and when, by the removal of those in front I was enabled
to draw this book out, I soon saw why it had been relegated to
such a remote place of concealment on the shelves of the Moore
library.

It was a collection of obscure memoirs written by an English woman,
but an English woman who had been in America during the early part
of the century, and who had been brought more or less into contact
with the mysteries connected with the Moore house in Washington.
Several passages were marked, one particularly, by a heavy
pencil-line running the length of the margin. As the name of Moore
was freely scattered through these passages as well as through two
or three faded newspaper clippings which I discovered pasted on the
inside cover, I lost no time in setting about their perusal.

The following extracts are from the book itself, taken in the order
in which I found them marked:

"It was about this time that I spent a week in the Moore house;
that grand and historic structure concerning which and its occupants
so many curious rumors are afloat. I knew nothing then of its
discreditable fame; but from the first moment of my entrance into
its ample and well lighted