letter. There was just a single line:

Jimmie--Jimmie, you haven't failed, have you?

Jimmie Dale stared at it. Failed! Failed--HER! The haggard look was in his face again. It was the bond between them that was at stake--the Gray Seal--the bond that had come, he knew for all time in that instant, to mean his life.

"God knows!" he muttered hoarsely, and flung himself into a lounging chair, still staring at the note.

The hours dragged by. Luncheon time arrived and passed--and then by special messenger the little package from Carruthers came. Jimmie Dale started to undo the string, then laid the package down, and held out his hands before him for inspection. They were trembling visibly. It was a strange condition for Jimmie Dale either to witness or experience, unlike him, foreign to him.

"This won't do, Jimmie," he said grimly, shaking his head. 

He picked up the package again, opened it, and from between two pieces of cardboard took out a large photographic print. A moment, two, Jimmie Dale examined it, used the magnifying glass again; and then a strange gleam came into the dark eyes, and his lips moved.

"I've won," said Jimmie Dale, with ominous softness. "I've WON!"

He was standing beside the rosewood desk, and he reached for the phone. Carruthers would be at home now--he called Carruthers there. After a moment or two he got the connection.

"This is Jimmie, Carruthers," he said. "Yes, I got it. Thanks. . . . Yes. . . . Listen. I want you to get Inspector Clayton, and bring him up here at once. . . . What? No, no--no! . . . How? . . . Why--er--tell him you're going to run a full page of him in the Sunday edition, and you want him to sit for a sketch. He'd go anywhere for that. . . . Yes. . . . Half an hour. . . . YES. . . . Good-bye."

Jimmie Dale hung up the receiver; and, hastily now, began to write upon a pad that lay before him on the desk. The minutes passed. As he wrote, he scored out words and lines here and there, substituting others. At the end he had covered three large pages with, to any one but himself, an indecipherable scrawl. These he shoved aside now, and, very carefully, very legibly, made a copy on fresh sheets. As he finished, he heard a car draw up in front of the house. Jimmie Dale folded the copied sheets neatly, tucked them in his pocket, lighted a cigarette, 

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