The Millionaire Baby

  THE MILLIONAIRE BABY

  "I HAVE SAID SO MUCH THAT I MUST SAY MORE. LISTEN AND BEMY FRIEND." _p. 288_]

  THE MILLIONAIRE BABY

  by

  ANNA KATHARINE GREEN

  Author of The Filigree Ball,The Leavenworth Case, Etc.

  With Illustrations by Arthur I. Keller

  IndianapolisThe Bobbs-Merrill CompanyPublishers

  Copyright 1905The Bobbs-Merrill Company

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE I Two Little Shoes 1 II "A Fearsome Man" 30 III A Charming Woman 39 IV Chalk-Marks 52 V The Old House in Yonkers 69 VI Doctor Pool 80 VII "Find the Child!" 98 VIII "Philo! Philo! Philo!" 109 IX The Bungalow 122 X Temptation 132 XI The Secret of the Old Pavilion 140 XII Behind the Wall 176 XIII "We Shall Have to Begin Again" 196 XIV Espionage 201 XV A Phantasm 207 XVI "An All-Conquering Beauty" 211 XVII In the Green Boudoir 232 XVIII "You Look As If--As If--" 249 XIX Frenzy 263 XX "What Do You Know?" 274 XXI Providence 289 XXII On the Second Terrace 315 XXIII A Coral Bead 321 XXIV "Shall I Give Him My Word, Harry?" 331 XXV The Work of an Instant 338 XXVI "He Will Never Forgive" 340 XXVII The Final Struggle 350

  THE MILLIONAIRE BABY

  I

  TWO LITTLE SHOES

  The morning of August eighteenth, 190-, was a memorable one to me. Fortwo months I had had a run of bad luck. During that time I had failed toscore in at least three affairs of unusual importance, and the resultwas a decided loss in repute as well as great financial embarrassment.As I had a mother and two sisters to support and knew but one way to doit, I was in a state of profound discouragement. This was before I tookup the morning papers. After I had opened and read them, not a man inNew York could boast of higher hopes or greater confidence in his powerto rise by one bold stroke from threatened bankruptcy to immediateindependence.

  The paragraph which had occasioned this amazing change must have passedunder the eyes of many of you. It created a wide-spread excitement atthe time and raised in more than one breast the hope of speedy fortune.It was attached to, or rather introduced, the most startling feature ofthe week, and it ran thus:

  A FORTUNE FOR A CHILD.

  _By cable from Southampton._

  A reward of five thousand dollars is offered, by Philo Ocumpaugh, to whoever will give such information as will lead to the recovery, alive or dead, of his six-year-old daughter, Gwendolen, missing since the afternoon of August the 16th, from her home in ----on-the-Hudson, New York, U. S. A.

  Fifty thousand dollars additional and no questions asked if she is restored unharmed within the week to her mother at Homewood.

  All communications to be addressed to Samuel Atwater, ----on-the-Hudson.

  A minute description of the child followed, but this did not interestme, and I did not linger over it. The child was no stranger to me. Iknew her well and consequently was quite aware of her personalcharacteristics. It was the great amount offered for her discovery andrestoration which moved me so deeply. Fifty thousand dollars! A fortunefor any man. More than a fortune to me, who stood in such need of readymoney. I was determined to win this extraordinary sum. I had my reasonfor hope and, in the light of this unexpectedly munificent reward,decided to waive all the considerations which had hitherto prevented mefrom stirring in the matter.

  There were other reasons less selfish which gave impetus to my resolve.I had done business for the Ocumpaughs before and been well treated inthe transaction. I recognized and understood both Mr. Ocumpaugh'speculiarities and those of his admired and devoted wife. As man andwoman they were kindly, honorable and devoted to many more intereststhan those connected with their own wealth. I also knew their hearts tobe wrapped up in this child,--the sole offspring of a long and happyunion, and the actual as well as prospective inheritor of more millionsthan I shall ever see thousands, unless I am fortunate enough to solvethe mystery now exercising the sympathies of the whole New York public.

  You have all heard of this child under another name. From her birth shehas been known as the Millionaire Baby, being the direct heir to threefortunes, two of which she had already received. I saw her first whenshe was three years old--a cherubic little being, lovely to look uponand possessing unusual qualities for so young a child. Indeed, herpicturesque beauty and appealing ways would have attracted all eyes andwon all hearts, even if she had not represented in her small person thewealth both of the Ocumpaugh and Rathbone families. There was anindividuality about her, combined with sensibilities of no ordinarynature, which, fully accounted for the devoted affection with which shewas universally regarded; and when she suddenly disappeared, it was easyto comprehend, if one did not share, the thrill of horror which sweptfrom one end of our broad continent to the other. Those who knew theparents, and those who did not, suffered an equal pang at the awfulthought of this petted innocent lost in the depths of the great unknown,with only the false caresses of her abductors to comfort her for thedeprivation of all those delights which love and unlimited means couldprovide to make a child of her years supremely happy.

  Her father--and this was what gave the keen edge of horror to the wholeoccurrence--was in Europe when she disappeared. He had been cabled atonce and his answer was the proffered reward with which I have openedthis history. An accompanying despatch to his distracted wife announcedhis relinquishment of the project which had taken him abroad and hisimmediate return on the next steamer sailing from Southampton. As thischanced to be the fastest on the line, we had reason to expect him insix days; meanwhile--

  But to complete my personal recapitulations. When the first news of thisstartling abduction flashed upon my eyes from the bulletin boards, Ilooked on the matter as one of too great magnitude to be dealt with byany but the metropolitan police; but as time passed and further detailsof the strange and seemingly inexplicable affair came to light, I beganto feel the stirring of the detective instinct within me (did I say thatI was connected with a private detective agency of some note in themetropolis?) and a desire, quite apart from any mere humane interest inthe event itself, to locate the intelligence back of such a desperatecrime: an intelligence so keen that, up to the present moment, if we maytrust the published accounts of the affair, not a clue had beenunearthed by which its author could be traced, or the means employed forcarrying off this petted object of a thousand cares.

  To be sure, there was a theory which eliminated all crime from theoccurrence as well as the intervention of any one in the child's fate:she might have strayed down to the river and been drowned. But theprobabilities were so opposed to this supposition, that the police hadrefused to embrace it, although the
mother had accepted it from thefirst, and up to the present moment, or so it was stated, had refused toconsider any other. As she had some basis for this conclusion--I amstill quoting the papers, you understand--I was not disposed to ignoreit in the study I proceeded to make of the situation. The details, as Iran them over in the hurried trip I now made up the river to ----, wereas follows:

  On the afternoon of Wednesday, August sixteenth, 190-, the guestsassembled in Mrs. Ocumpaugh's white and gold music-room were suddenlythrown into confusion by the appearance among them of a young girl in astate of great perturbation, who, running up to the startled hostess,announced that Gwendolen, the petted darling of the house, was missingfrom the bungalow where she had been lying asleep, and could not befound, though a dozen men had been out on search.

  The wretched mother, who, as it afterward transpired, had not only giventhe orders by which the child had been thus removed from the excitementup at the house, but had actually been herself but a few moments beforeto see that the little one was well cared for and happy, seemed struckas by a mortal blow at these words and, uttering a heart-rending scream,ran out on the lawn. A crowd of guests rushed after her, and as theyfollowed her flying figure across the lawn to the small copse in whichlay hidden this favored retreat, they could hear, borne back on thewind, the wild protests of the young nurse, that she had left the childfor a minute only and then to go no farther than the bench running alongthe end of the bungalow facing the house; that she had been told shecould sit there and listen to the music, but that she never would haveleft the child's side for a minute if she had not supposed she wouldhear her least stir--protests which the mother scarcely seemed to heed,and which were presently lost in the deep silence which fell on all, as,brought to a stand in the thick shrubbery surrounding the bungalow, theysaw the mother stagger up to the door, look in and turn toward them withdeath in her face.

  "The river!" she gasped, "the river!" and heedless of all attempt tostop her, heedless even of the efforts made by the little one's nurse todraw her attention to the nearness of a certain opening in the highhedge marking off the Ocumpaugh grounds on this side, she ran down thebank in the direction of the railway, but fainted before she had morethan cleared the thicket. When they lifted her up, they all saw thereason for this. She had come upon a little shoe which she held withfrantic clutch against her breast--her child's shoe, which, as sheafterward acknowledged, she had loosened with her own hand on the littleone's foot.

  Of course, after this the whole hillside was searched down to the fencewhich separated it from the railroad track. But no further trace of themissing child was found, nor did it appear possible to any one that shecould have strayed away in this direction. For not only was the bankexceedingly steep and the fence at its base impassable, but a gang ofmen, working as good fortune would have it, at such a point on the roadbelow as to render it next to impossible for her to have crossed thetrack within a half-mile either way without being observed, had one andall declared that not one of them had seen her or any other persondescend the slope.

  This, however, made but little impression on the mother. She wouldlisten to no hints of abduction, but persisted in her declaration thatthe river had swallowed her darling, and would neither rest nor turn herhead from its waters till some half a dozen men about the place had beenset systematically to work to drag the stream.

  Meanwhile, the police had been notified and the whole town aroused. Thesearch, which had been carried on up to this time in a frantic butdesultory way, now became methodical. Nor was it confined to theOcumpaugh estate. All the roads and byways within half a mile either waywere covered by a most careful investigation. All the near-by houseswere entered, especially those which the child was most in the habit offrequenting, but no one had seen her, nor could any trace of herpresence be found. At five o'clock all hope of her return was abandonedand, much against Mrs. Ocumpaugh's wish, who declared that the news ofthe child's death would affect her father far less than the dreadfulpossibilities of an abduction, the exact facts of the case had beencabled to Mr. Ocumpaugh.

  The night and another day passed, bringing but little relief to thesituation. Not an eye had as yet been closed in Homewood, nor had thesearch ceased for an instant. Not an inch of the great estate had beenoverlooked, yet men could still be seen beating the bushes and peeringinto all the secluded spots which once had formed the charm of thisdelightful place. As on the land, so on the river. All the waters in thedock had been dragged, yet the work went on, some said under the veryeye of Mrs. Ocumpaugh. But there was no result as yet.

  In the city the interest was intense. The telegraph at policeheadquarters had been clicking incessantly for thirty-six hours underthe direction, some said, of the superintendent himself. Everythingwhich could be done had been done, but as yet the papers were able toreport nothing beyond some vague stories of a child, with its face verymuch bound up, having been seen at the heels of a woman in the GrandCentral Station in New York, and hints of a covered wagon, with a cryingchild inside, which had been driven through Westchester County at agreat pace shortly before sunset on the previous day, closely followedby a buggy with the storm-apron up, though the sun shone and there wasnot a cloud in the sky; but nothing definite, nothing which could givehope to the distracted mother or do more than divide the attention ofthe police between two different but equally tenable theories. Then camethe cablegram from Mr. Ocumpaugh, which threw amateur as well asprofessional detectives into the field. Among the latter was myself;which naturally brings me back once more to my own conclusions.

  Of one thing I felt sure. Very early in my cogitations, before we hadquitted the Park Avenue tunnel in fact, I had decided in my own mindthat if I were to succeed in locating the lost heiress, it must be bysubtler methods than lay open to the police. I was master of suchmethods (in this case at least), and though one of many owning tosimilar hopes on this very train which was rushing me through toHomewood, I had no feeling but that of confidence in a final success.How well founded this confidence was, will presently appear.

  The number of seedy-looking men with a mysterious air who alighted in mycompany at ---- station and immediately proceeded to make their way upthe steep street toward Homewood, warned me that it would soon beextremely difficult for any one to obtain access to the parties mostinterested in the child's loss. Had I not possessed the advantage ofbeing already known to Mrs. Ocumpaugh, I should have immediately givenup all hope of ever obtaining access to her presence; and even with thisfact to back me, I approached the house with very little confidence inmy ability to win my way through the high iron gates I had sofrequently passed before without difficulty.

  And indeed I found them well guarded. As I came nearer, I could see manafter man being turned away, and not till my card had been handed in,and a hurried note to boot, did I obtain permission to pass the firstboundary. Another note secured me admission to the house, but there myprogress stopped. Mrs. Ocumpaugh had already been interviewed by fivereporters and a special agent from the New York police. She could see noone else at present. If, however, my business was of importance, anopportunity would be given me to see Miss Porter. Miss Porter was hercompanion and female factotum.

  As I had calculated upon having a half-dozen words with the motherherself, I was greatly thrown out by this; but going upon the principlethat "half a loaf was better than no bread," I was about to express adesire to see Miss Porter, when an incident occurred which effectuallychanged my mind in this regard.

  The hall in which I was standing and which communicated with the sidedoor by which I had entered, ended in a staircase, leading, as I hadreason to believe, to the smaller and less pretentious rooms in the rearof the house. While I hesitated what reply to give the girl awaiting mydecision, I caught the sound of soft weeping from the top of thisstaircase, and presently beheld the figure of a young woman comingslowly down, clad in coat and hat and giving every evidence both indress and manner of leaving for good. It was Miss Graham, a young womanwho held the position of nursery-gov
erness to the child. I had seen herbefore, and had no small admiration for her, and the sensations Iexperienced at the sight of her leaving the house where her serviceswere apparently no longer needed, proved to me, possibly for the firsttime, that I had more heart in my breast than I had ever beforerealized. But it was not this which led me to say to the maid standingbefore me that I preferred to see Mrs. Ocumpaugh herself, and would callearly the next day. It was the thought that this sorrowing girl wouldhave to pass the gauntlet of many prying eyes on her way to the stationand that she might be glad of an escort whom she knew and had shown sometrust in. Also,--but the reasons behind that _also_ will soon becomesufficiently apparent.

  I was right in supposing that my presence on the porch outside would bea pleasing surprise to her. Though her tears continued to flow sheaccepted my proffered companionship with gratitude, and soon we werepassing side by side across the lawn toward a short cut leading down thebank to the small flag-station used by the family and by certain favoredneighbors. As we threaded the shrubbery, which is very thick about theplace, she explained to me the cause of her abrupt departure. The sightof her, it seems, had become insupportable to Mrs. Ocumpaugh. Though noblame could be rightfully attached to her, it was certainly true thatthe child had been carried off while in her charge, and however hard itmight be for _her_, few could blame the mother for wishing her removedfrom the house desolated by her lack of vigilance. But she was a goodgirl and felt the humiliation of her departure almost in the light of adisgrace.

  As we came again into an open portion of the lawn, she stopped short andlooked back.

  "Oh!" she cried, gripping me by the arm, "there is Mrs. Ocumpaugh stillat the window. All night she has stood there, except when she flew downto the river at the sound of some imaginary call from the boats. Shebelieves, she really believes, that they will yet come upon Gwendolen'sbody in the dock there."

  Following the direction of her glance, I looked up. Was that Mrs.Ocumpaugh--that haggard, intent figure with eyes fixed in awfulexpectancy on the sinister group I could picture to myself down at thewater's edge? Never could I have imagined such a look on features I hadalways considered as cold as they were undeniably beautiful. As I tookin the misery it expressed, that awful waiting for an event momentlyanticipated, and momently postponed, I found myself, without reason andsimply in response to the force of her expression, unconsciously sharingher expectation, and with a momentary forgetfulness of all theprobabilities, was about to turn toward the spot upon which her glanceswere fixed, when a touch on my arm recalled me to myself.

  "Come!" whispered my trembling companion. "She may look down and see ushere."

  I yielded to her persuasion and turned away into the cluster of treesthat lay between us and that opening in the hedge through which ourcourse lay. Had I been alone I should not have budged till I had seensome change--any change--in the face whose appearance had so deeplyaffected me.

  "Mrs. Ocumpaugh certainly believes that the body of her child lies inthe water," I remarked, as we took our way onward as rapidly aspossible. "Do you know her reasons for this?"

  "She says, and I think she is right so far, that the child has been bentfor a long time on fishing; that she has heard her father talkrepeatedly of his great luck in Canada last year and wished to try thesport for herself; that she has been forbidden to go to the river, butmust have taken the first opportunity when no eye was on her to do so;and--and--Mrs. Ocumpaugh shows a bit of string which she found lastnight in the bushes alongside the tracks when she ran down, as I havesaid, at some imaginary shout from the boats--a string which shedeclares she saw rolled up in Gwendolen's hand when she went into thebungalow to look at her. Of course, it may not be the same, but Mrs.Ocumpaugh thinks it is, and--"

  "Do you think it possible, after all, that the child did stray down tothe water?"

  "No," was the vehement disclaimer. "Gwendolen's feet were excessivelytender. She could not have taken three steps in only one shoe. I shouldhave heard her cry out."

  "What if she went in some one's arms?"

  "A stranger's? She had a decided instinct against strangers. Never couldany one she did not know and like have carried her so far as thatwithout her waking. Then those men on the track,--they would have seenher. No, Mr. Trevitt, it was not in _that_ direction she went."

  The force of her emphasis convinced me that she had an opinion of herown in regard to this matter. Was it one she was ready to impart?

  "In what direction, then?" I asked, with a gentleness I hoped wouldprove effective.

  Her impulse was toward a frank reply. I saw her lips part and her eyestake on the look which precedes a direct avowal, but, as chance wouldhave it, we came at that moment upon the thicket inclosing the bungalow,and the sight of its picturesque walls, showing brown through theverdure of the surrounding shrubbery, seemed to act as a check upon her,for, with a quick look and a certain dry accent quite new in her speech,she suddenly inquired if I did not want to see the place from whichGwendolen had disappeared.

  Naturally I answered in the affirmative and followed her as she turnedaside into the circular path which embraces this hidden retreat; but Ihad rather have heard her answer to my question, than to have goneanywhere or seen anything at that moment. Yet, when in full view of thebungalow's open door, she stopped to point out to me the nearness of theplace to that opening in the hedge we had just been making for, and whenshe even went so far as to indicate the tangled little path by whichthat opening could be reached directly from the farther end of thebungalow, I considered that my question had been answered, though inanother way than I anticipated, even before I noted the slight flushwhich rose to her cheek under my earnest scrutiny.

  As it is important for the exact location of the bungalow to beunderstood, I subjoin a diagram of this part of the grounds:

  LAWN EXTENDING TO THE HIGHWAY.

  A The Ocumpaugh mansion. B The Bungalow. C Mrs. Carew's house. D Privatepath. E Gap in hedge leading to the Ocumpaugh grounds. F Gap leadinginto Mrs. Carew's grounds. G Bench at end of bungalow.]

  As I took this all in, I ventured to ask some particulars of the familyliving so near the Ocumpaughs.

  "Who occupies that house?" I asked, pointing to the sloping roofs andornamental chimneys arising just beyond us over the hedge-rows.

  "Oh, that is Mrs. Carew's home. She is a widow and Mrs. Ocumpaugh'sdearest friend. How she loved Gwendolen! How we all loved her! And now,that _wretch_--"

  She burst into tears. They were genuine ones; so was her grief.

  I waited till she was calm again, then I inquired very softly:

  "What wretch?"

  "You have not been inside," she suggested, pointing sharply to thebungalow.

  I took the implied rebuke and entered the door she indicated. A man wassitting within, but he rose and went out when he saw us. He wore apoliceman's badge and evidently recognized her or possibly myself. Inoted, however, that he did not go far from the doorway.

  "It is only a den," remarked Miss Graham.

  I looked about me. She had described it perfectly: a place to lounge inon an August day like the present. Walls of Georgia pine across one ofwhich hung a series of long dark rugs; a long, low window looking towardthe house, and a few articles of bamboo furniture describe the place.Among the latter was a couch. It was drawn up underneath the window, onthe other side of which ran the bench where my companion declared shehad been sitting while listening to the music.

  "Wouldn't you think my attention would have been caught by the sound ofany one moving about here?" she cried, pointing to the couch and then tothe window. "But the window was closed and the door, as you see, isround the corner from the bench."

  "A person with a very stealthy step, apparently."

  "Very," she admitted. "Oh, how can I ever forgive myself! how can Iever, ever forgive myself!"

  As she stood wringing her hands in sight of that empty couch, I cast ascrutinizing glance about me, which led me to remark:

  "This interior looks new
; much newer than the outside. It has quite amodern air."

  "Yes, the bungalow is old, very old; but this room, or den, or whateveryou might call it, was all remodeled and fitted up as you see it nowwhen the new house went up. It had long been abandoned as a place ofretreat, and had fallen into such decay that it was a perfect eyesoreto all who saw it. Now it is likely to be abandoned again, and for whata reason! Oh, the dreadful place! How I hate it, now Gwendolen is gone!"

  "One moment. I notice another thing. This room does not occupy the wholeof the bungalow."

  Either she did not hear me or thought it unnecessary to reply; andperceiving that her grief had now given way to an impatience to be gone,I did not press the matter, but led the way myself to the door. As weentered the little path which runs directly to that outlet in the hedgemarked E, I ventured to speak again:

  "You have reasons, or so it appears, for believing that the child wascarried off through this very path?"

  The reply was impetuous:

  "How else could she have been spirited away so quickly? Besides,--" hereher eye stole back at me over her shoulder,--"I have since rememberedthat as I ran out of the bungalow in my fright at finding the childgone, I heard the sound of wheels on Mrs. Carew's driveway. It did notmean much to me then, for I expected to find the child somewhere aboutthe grounds; but _now_, when I come to think, it means everything, for achild's cry mingled with it (or I imagined that it did) and thatchild--"

  "But," I forcibly interposed, "the police should know this."

  "They do; and so does Mrs. Ocumpaugh; but she has only the one idea, andnothing can move her."

  I remembered the wagon with the crying child inside which had been seenon the roads the previous evening, and my heart fell a little in spiteof myself.

  "Couldn't Mrs. Carew tell us something about this?" I asked, with agesture toward the house we were now passing.

  "No. Mrs. Carew went to New York that morning and had only just returnedwhen we missed Gwendolen. She had been for her little nephew, who haslately been made an orphan, and she was too busy making him feel at hometo notice if a carriage had passed through her grounds."

  "Her servants then?"

  "She had none. All had been sent away. The house was quite empty."

  I thought this rather odd, but having at this moment reached the longflight of steps leading down the embankment, I made no reply till wereached the foot. Then I observed:

  "I thought Mrs. Carew was very intimate with Mrs. Ocumpaugh."

  "She is; they are more like sisters than mere friends."

  "Yet she goes to New York the very day her friend gives a musicale."

  "Oh, she had good reasons for that. Mrs. Carew is planning to sail thisweek for Europe, and this was her only opportunity for getting herlittle nephew, who is to go with her. But I don't know as she will sail,now. She is wild with grief over Gwendolen's loss, and will not feellike leaving Mrs. Ocumpaugh till she knows whether we shall ever see thedear child again. But, I shall miss my train."

  Here her step visibly hastened.

  As it was really very nearly due, I had not the heart to detain her. Butas I followed in her wake I noticed that for all her hurry a curioushesitancy crept into her step at times, and I should not have beensurprised at any moment to see her stop and confront me on one of thetwo remaining long flights of steps leading down the steep hillside.

  But we both reached the base without her having yielded to this impulse,and presently we found ourselves in full view of the river and the smallflag-station located but a few rods away toward the left. As we turnedtoward the latter, we both cast an involuntary look back at theOcumpaugh dock, where a dozen men could be seen at work dragging theriver-bed with grappling irons. It made a sadly suggestive picture, andthe young girl at my side shuddered violently as we noted the expressionof morbid curiosity on the faces of such onlookers, men and women, aswere drawn up at the end of the small point on which the boat-housestood.

  But I had another reason than this for urging her on. I had noticed how,at the sight of her slight figure descending the slope, some half-dozenmen or so had separated themselves from this group, with everyappearance of intending to waylay and question her. She noticed thistoo, and drawing up more closely to my side, exclaimed with markedfeeling:

  "Save me from these men and I will tell you something that no one--"

  But here she stopped, here our very thoughts stopped. A shout had risenfrom the group at the water-edge; a shout which made us both turn, andeven caused the men who had started to follow us to wheel about and rushback to the dock with every appearance of intense excitement.

  "What is it? What can it be?" faltered my greatly-alarmed companion.

  "They have found something. See! what is that the man in the boat isholding up? It looks like--"

  But she was already half-way to the point, outstripping the very menwhose importunities she had shrunk from a moment before. I was not farbehind her, and almost immediately we found ourselves wedged among theagitated group leaning over the little object which had been tossedashore into the first hand outstretched to receive it.

  It was a second little shoe--filled with sand and dripping with water,but recognizable as similar to the one already found on the precedingday high up on the bank. As this fact was borne in on us all, a groan ofpity broke from more than one pair of lips, and eye after eye stole upthe hillside to that far window in the great pile above us where themother's form could be dimly discerned swaying in an agitation caughtfrom our own excitement.

  But there was one amongst us whose glance never left that little shoe.The train she had been so anxious to take whistled and went thunderingby, but she never moved or noticed. Suddenly she reached out her hand.

  "Let me see it, please," she entreated. "I was her nurse; let me take itin my hand."

  The man who held it passed it over. She examined it long and closely.

  "Yes, it is hers," said she. But in another moment she had laid it downwith what I thought was a very peculiar look.

  Instantly it was caught up and carried with a rush up the slope to whereMrs. Ocumpaugh could be seen awaiting it with outstretched arms. But Idid not linger to mark her reception of it. Miss Graham had drawn me toone side and was whispering in my ear:

  "I must talk to you. I can not keep back another moment what I think orwhat I feel. Some one is playing with Mrs. Ocumpaugh's fears. That shoeis Gwendolen's, but it is not the mate of the one found on the bankabove. That was for the left foot _and so is this one_. Did you notnotice?"