felt the reality of your story intensely?"

"I did indeed, Mr. Gillon."

"It distressed you very much?"

"I might have been going through the whole thing."

"It--it even moved you to tears?"

"I should be ashamed to say how many."

"I daresay," I pursued, smiling with all my might, "that even your handkerchief was heavy with them, Miss Brabazon?"

"It was!"

"Then so much for the origin of that idea! It would have occurred to anybody under similar circumstances."

Miss Julia gave me the smile I wanted. I felt I had gone up in her estimation, and sent Delavoye down. But I had reckoned without his genius for taking a dilemma by the horns.

"This is an old quarrel between Gillon and me, Miss Brabazon. I hold that all Witching Hill is more or less influenced by the wicked old wizard of the place. Mr. Gillon says it's all my eye, and simply will not let belief take hold of him. Yet your Turkish building actually existed within a few feet of where we're sitting now; and suppose the very leaves on the trees still whisper about it to those who have ears to hear; suppose you've taken the whole thing down almost at dictation! I don't know how your story goes on, Miss Brabazon----""No more do I," said Miss Brabazon, manifestly impressed and not at all offended by his theory. "It's a queer thing--I never should have thought of such a thing myself--but I certainly did dash it all off as if somebody was telling me what to say, and at such a rate that my mind's still a blank from one page to the next."

She picked the script out of her lap, and we watched her bewildered face as it puckered to a frown over the rustling sheets.

"I shouldn't wonder," said Delavoye a little hastily, "if his next effort wasn't to subvert her religious beliefs."

"To make game of them!" assented Miss Julia in scandalised undertones. "'The demoniacal Duke now set himself to deface and destroy the beauty of 

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