class on a third-class ticket. They thought they could do what they liked with impunity when they saw I was a clergyman. You don't know how common that kind of anti-clerical spirit is. Simpkins is evidently swelled out with it. It's going now, like an epidemic. Look at France and Italy. The one chance we have of keeping Ireland free from it is to isolate each case the moment it appears. By far the wisest thing we can do is to have Simpkins killed at once." 

 "I don't quite see how you are going to manage it, J. J., without being hanged yourself." 

 "Is he a married man?" 

 "No, he isn't." 

 "Then the matter's perfectly simple. I don't think I mentioned to you, Major, that I travelled down in the train to-day with a professional murderess." 

 "Do try to talk sense, J. J." 

 "Her speciality is husbands," said Meldon.  "I don't know exactly how many she has done for in her time, but there must be several. She said their ghosts haunted her at night, and that sometimes she couldn't sleep on account of them." 

 "I suppose," said Major Kent, "that it amuses you to babble like an idiot in an asylum." 

 "It doesn't amuse me in the least. I feel desperately depressed when I think of those poor fellows lying in their graves with ounces and ounces of strychnine in their stomachs. That's not the kind of thing I consider amusing, though you may. Miss King doesn't consider it amusing either. She said she often cries when she thinks of her victims, and very often she can't sleep at night." 

 "Miss King!" said the Major.  "That's the name of the lady who has taken Ballymoy House for the summer." 

 "Exactly. The lady whom I propose to marry to your friend Simpkins." 

 "Good Lord! J. J. Why? What has the poor woman done?" 

 "It's not so much what she has done," said Meldon, "that makes me think she'd be a suitable match for Simpkins. It's what she will do. She'll murder him." 

 "Nonsense." 

 "It's not nonsense. She will. She told me herself that she has come to Ballymoy for the express purpose of murdering another husband. She said she wanted quiet and security from interruption in order to go on with her work." 

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