ith all sorts of visits from
the police and realized that at any moment my effects might be
ransacked, I sought a hiding place for this letter, which no man
without superhuman insight could discover. Look!"

And, pulling off the outside wrapper, he inserted the point of
his penknife under the edge of the paper lining the inside cover
and ripped it off with a jerk.

"I pasted this here myself," he cried, and showed us where between
this paper and the boards, in a place thinned out to hold it, there
lay a number of folded sheets, which, with a deep sigh, he handed
over to the major's inspection. As he did so he remarked:

"I had rather have died any natural death than have had my miserable
wife's secret known. But since the crime has come to light, this
story of her sin and her repentance may serve in some slight degree
to mitigate public opinion. She was sorely tempted and she
succumbed; the crime of her ancestors was in her blood."

He again walked off. The major unfolded the sheets.

XXV

WHO WILL TELL THE MAN INSIDE THERE

Later I saw this letter. It was like no other that has ever come
under my eye. Written at intervals, as her hand had power or her
misery found words, it bore on its face all the evidences of that
restless, suffering spirit which for thirty-six hours drove her in
frenzy about her room, and caused Loretta to say, in her effort to
describe her mistress' face as it appeared to her at the end of
this awful time: "It was as if a blight had passed over it. Once
gay and animated beyond the power of any one to describe, it had
become a ghost's face, with the glare of some awful resolve upon
it." I give this letter just as it was written-disjointed
paragraphs, broken sentences, unfinished words and all. The
breaks show where she laid down her pen, possibly for that wild
pacing of the floor which left such unmistakable signs behind it.
It opens abruptly:

"I killed him. I am all that I said I was, and you can never again
give me a thought save in the way of cursing and to bewail the day
I came into your life. But you can not hate me more than I hate
myself, my wicked self, who, seeing an obstacle in the way to
happiness, stamped it out of existence, and so forfeited all right
to happiness forever.

"It was so easy! Had it been a hard thing to do; had it been
necessary to lay hand on knife or lift a pistol, I might have
realized the act and paused. But just a little spring whi