and if you consider a reward necessary, in order to bring about his apprehension more quickly, offer it, and I will pay it only too gladly. I shall know no peace until this dastardly crime has been avenged."

"I can quite understand that," the doctor remarked. "You will have the sympathy of the whole County."

"And now," said the police officer, "I must be going. I shall take a man with me and call at the 'George and Dragon.' The name of the person you mentioned to me is——"

"Richard Murbridge," said Jim, and thereupon furnished the officer with a description of the man in question.

"You will, of course, be able to identify him?"

"I should know him again if I did not see him for twenty years," Jim answered. "Wilkins, the butler, will also be glad to give you evidence as to his coming here last night."

"Thank you," the officer replied. "I will let you know as soon as I have anything to report."

The doctor and the police agent thereupon bade him good-day and took their departure, and Jim went in search of his grief-stricken sister. The terrible news had by this time permeated the whole household, and had caused the greatest consternation.

"I knew what it would be last night," said the cook. "Though Mr. Wilkins laughed at me, I felt certain that Mary Sampson did not see the Black Dwarf for nothing. Why, it's well known by everybody that whenever that horrible little man is seen in the house death follows within twenty-four hours."

The frightened maids to whom she spoke shuddered at her words.

"What's more," the cook continued, "they may talk about murderers as they please, but they forget that this is not the first time a man has been found strangled in this house. There is more in it than meets the eye, as the saying goes."

"Lor, Mrs. Ryan, you don't mean to say that you think it was the ghost that killed the poor master?" asked one of the maids, her eyes dilating with horror.

"I don't say as how it was, and I don't say as how it wasn't," that lady replied somewhat ambiguously, and then she added oracularly: "Time will show."

In the meantime Jim had written a short note to his sweetheart, telling her of the crime, and imploring her to come 

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