the interests of the man who wrote it, you will yourself desire to read his words aloud, as[53] the manner and meaning of his death is a mystery which you as well as all the other members of his household must desire to see immediately cleared up."

[53]

"Open it!" she cried, thrusting it into the hands of the physician, who by this time had rejoined the group. "And may God——"

She did not finish. The sacred name seemed to act as a restraint upon the passion in whose cause it had been invoked. With her back to them all she waited for the doctor to read the lines to which she seemed to attach so apprehensive an interest.

It was impossible for me to leave at a moment so critical. Watching the doctor, I saw him draw out the paper I had so carefully enclosed in an envelope, and after looking at it, turn it over and over in such astonishment and perplexity that we all caught the alarm and crowded about him for explanation. Alas, it was a simple one! The paper concerning which I had endured so many qualms of conscience, and from the reading of which the young girl had shrunk with every appearance of intolerable dread, proved upon opening it to be an absolutely blank one.

There was not upon its smooth surface so much as the faintest trace of words.

[54]

[54]

VII

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN BY THE NEWEL-POST

his is surprising. Do you understand this, Miss Meredith? There is nothing written here. The sheet is perfectly blank."

She turned, stared, and laughed convulsively.

"Blank, do you say? What a fuss about nothing! No words, no words at all? Let me see. I certainly expected you to find some final message in it."

What a change of manner! The moment before she had confronted us, a silent agonised woman; now her words rattled forth with such feverish volubility we scarcely knew her. The coroner, not noticing, or purposely blind to the relief she showed, 

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