our point of view, absolutely satisfactory.”

“I know that,” she murmured in a strangled voice. “But I don’t feel as if that knowledge made the shame of it any easier to bear—now.”

He felt startled. It was the first time that Jean had admitted that there was any shame to be faced.

“Nonsense!” he exclaimed vigorously. “Think what you would be feeling—what I should be feeling—if we had the slightest doubt about the matter?”

She had moved away, and was looking at him with wide-open eyes.

“I—I don’t understand,” she stammered.

“Forget yourself and Harry for a moment.” He felt that a touch of sternness, even of roughness, would do the girl good just now. “Think of what the innocent friends, ay, and lovers, of a real murderer must feel when the net is slowly but inexorably closing round him. Supposing you half suspected, or a quarter suspected, or even a hundredth part suspected—the man you love?”

The girl smiled; but it was a wan, pitiful smile.

“I can’t imagine such a thing. And you know I can’t, Uncle Jock.”

“Are you going to answer Harry’s note?” he asked abruptly.

“Do you think I ought?”

“I do! I think you ought to write him a cheerful brave letter, reminding him that this is the beginning of the end, and that within a very short time you and he will have come out from the darkness into the sunshine.”

She went straight round the writing table, and leaning down, drew a sheet of notepaper toward her. She wrote:

95

My darling Harry

I know what is going to happen to-night. I want you to remember that it is the beginning of the end; that very soon, in a few days at most, we shall have come out from the darkness into the sunshine.

Jean

And then, after she had addressed the envelope, she put her hands over her face, and burst into a passion of anguished sobs.

Sheltered by the heavy pall of a dark winter night, Jean Bower, six hours later, crept out of the garden door of Bonnie Doon into the lonely country road which 

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