"Perfectly."

"In minute detail?"

"Yes."

The Tracer thought a moment: "Does she wear a ring?"

"Yes; can't you see?"

"Draw it for me."

They seated themselves side by side, and Harren drew a rough sketch of the ring which he insisted was so plainly visible on her hand:

[Illustration: Ring with an X]

"Oh," observed the Tracer, "she wears the Seal of Solomon on her ring."

Harren looked up at him. "That symbol has haunted me persistently for three years," he said. "I have found it everywhere--on articles that I buy, on house furniture, on the belts of dead ladrones, on the hilts of creeses, on the funnels of steamers, on the headstalls of horses. If they put a laundry mark on my linen it's certain to be this! If I buy a box of matches the sign is on it. Why, I've even seen it on the brilliant wings of tropical insects. It's got on my nerves. I dream about it."

[Illustration: Cryptographic symbol]

"And you buy books about it and try to work out its mystical meaning?" suggested the Tracer, smiling.But Harren's gray eyes were serious. He said: "_She_ never comes to me without that symbol somewhere about her. . . . I told you she never spoke to me. That is true; yet once, in a vivid dream of her, she did speak. I--I was almost ashamed to tell you of that."

"Tell me."

"A--a dream? Do you wish to know what I dreamed?"

"Yes--if it was a dream."

"It was. I was asleep on the deck of the _Mindinao_, dead tired after a fruitless hike. I dreamed she came toward me through a young woodland all lighted by the sun, and in her hands she held masses of that wild flower we call Solomon's Seal. And she said--in the voice I know must be like hers: 'If you could only read! If you would only understand the message I send you! It is 

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