as he sank wearily into the depths of one of the handsome green leather chairs that stood on either side of the fireplace in the dining-room at Adder

oo upon the polished black oak beneath them. She, too, like her husband showed signs of severe nervous prostration. She r

, tap, tap, as though-as though-well, give it a rest, it's g

he

aren't they? Have you noticed, Charlotte, that there'

I expect it's old Kyser's room when he'

brightly in the old-fashioned fire-place. Then he got up and with hands thrust deep in his

have said he was bringing Aunt Eliza? she's never come before when he's paid us a visit. I thought I should have fainted dead off just now when the old fellow asked me to show him which was the bath-room-he takes a cold tub every morn

dkerchief over his fo

crocks anyway, I'd be frightened to death of blackmail. You ought to have known that albums are Aunt Eliza's special weakness. She got hold of it at once and made me go through all the lot and tell her

a is yours rem

k it makes it any easier for me?

said that you were to be

arguing how we came to be here. We are here, and here we've got to stay and make the best of a

removed the little paper shades and let the light fall full upon the portrait

as an engineer and that he's now retired and living in Peru. This old lady over the sideboard," went on Edward, crossing the room, "can be a friend of my mother's; say she's been dead some years now and that you forget her name but think it was Jane something. Any other portraits he asks about say we picked them

the bedroom seemed to him to be quite unnecessary for a short visit such as he had anticipated. Hitherto the visits of Uncle Jasper had been always the same, a night or two at the most and the days spent in business in London. His luggage had been invariably one suit case and a hatbox. But the present

t, neither had he reckoned upon the nerve strain. Tradesmen would be calling for orders-visitors, too, mi

ner. What more reasonable than that he should place it at the disposal of a friend? If he were alone, the guarding of the secret would be a simple matter,

dward rose, and crossing to the massive sideboard poured himself out a liberal allowance of brandy,

rk and the scene was desolate in the extreme. A solitary light twinkled out here and there from some window in the little village that lay beneath him in the valley, and farther off the pale radiance in the sky denote

ttle, and, quietly closing