The Secret of Lonesome Cove

Lonesome Cove is one of the least frequented stretches on the New England seaboard. From the land side, the sheer hundred-foot drop of Hawkill Cliffs shuts it off. Access by water is denied; denied with a show of menacing teeth, when the sea curls its lips back, amid a swirl of angry currents, from its rocks and reefs, warning boats away. There is no settlement near the cove. The somber repute suggested by its name has served to keep cottagers from building on the wildly beautiful uplands that overbrood the beach.

Sheep browse between the thickets of ash and wild cherry extending almost to the brink of the height, and the straggling pathways along the edge, worn by the feet of their herders, afford the only suggestion of human traffic within half a mile of the spot. A sharp-cut ravine leads down to the sea by a rather treacherous descent.

Near the mouth of this opening, a considerable gathering of folk speckled the usually deserted beach, at noon of July sixth. They centered on a dark object, a few yards within the flood-tide limit. Some scouted about, peering at the sand. Others pointed first to the sea, then to the cliffs with the open gestures of those who argue vehemently. But always their eyes returned, drawn back by an unfailing magnetism, to the central object.

From some distance away a lone man of a markedly different type from the others observed them with an expression of displeasure. He had reached the cove by an arduous scramble, possible only to a good climber, around the jutting elbow of the cliff to the northward. It was easily to be read in his face that he was both surprised and annoyed to find people there before him. One of the group presently detached himself and ambled over to the newcomer, with an accelerated speed as he drew nearer.

"Swanny!" he ejaculated, "if it ain't Perfessor Kent! Didn't know you at first under them whiskers. You remember me, don't you? I used to drive you around when you was here before."

"How are you, Jarvis?" returned the other. "Still in the livery business, I suppose?"

"Yes. What brings you here, Perfessor?"

"Holidays. I've just come out of the woods. And as you have some very interesting sea currents just here, I thought I'd have a look at them. Nobody really knows anything about coast currents, you know. Now my opportunity is spoiled." He indicated the crowd by a movement of his head.

"Spoilt? I guess not. You couldn't have come at a better time," said the local man eagerly.

"Ah, but you see, I had planned to swim out to the eddy, and make some personal observations."

"You was going to swim into Dead Man's Eddy?" asked the other, aghast. "Why, Perfessor, you must have turned foolish. They ain't a man on this coast would take a chance like that."

"Superstition," retorted the other curtly. "On a still day such as this there would be no danger to an experienced swimmer. The conditions are ideal except for this crowd. What is it? Has the village gone picnicking?"

"Not sca'cely! Ain't you heard? Another one's come in through the eddy. Lies over yonder."

Professor Kent's eyebrows went up, as he glanced toward the indicated spot; then gathered in a frown.

"Not washed up there, surely?" he said.

"Thet's what," answered Jarvis.

"When?"

"Sometime early this morning."

"Pshaw!" said the other, turning to look at the curving bulwark of rocks over which the soft slow swell was barely breaking. "If it were the other end of the cove, now, I could understand it."

"Yes," agreed Jarvis, "they mostly come in at the other end, on this tide."

"Mostly? Always." The professor's tone was positive. "Unless my charts are wrong. But this-well, it spoils at least one phase of my theory."

"Theery!" exclaimed the liveryman, his pale eyes alight. "You got a theery? But I thought you didn't know anything about the body, till I told you, just now."

"Oh, my ruined theory has reference to the currents," sighed the other. "It has nothing to do with dead men, as such."

"Neither has this," was the prompt response, delivered with a jerk of the thumb toward the dark object.

"No? What is it then, if not a dead man?"

"A dead woman."

"Oh! All the same, it shouldn't have come in on this section of the beach at all."

"Thet ain't half the strangeness of it, the way it washed in. Lonesome Cove has had some queer folks drift home to it, but nothing as queer as this. Come and see for yourself."

Still frowning, Professor Kent suffered himself to be led to the spot. Two or three of the group, as it parted before him, greeted him. He found himself looking down on a corpse clad in a dark silk dress and stretched on a wooden grating, to which it was lashed with a small rope. Everything about the body indicated wealth. The dress was expensively made. The shoes were of the best type, and the stockings were silk. The head was marred by a frightful bruise which had crushed in the right side and extended around behind the ear. Blood had clotted thickly in the short close-curled hair. The left side was unmarked. The eyes were closed and the mouth was slightly open, showing a glint of gold amid very white and regular teeth. An expression of deadly terror distorted the face. Professor Kent bent closely over it.

"That's strange; very strange," he murmured. "It should be peaceful."

"But look at the hand!" cried Jarvis.

Here, indeed, was the astounding feature of the tragedy; the aspect that brought Kent to his knees, the more closely to observe. The body lay twisted slightly to the right, with the left arm extended. The left wrist was enclosed in a light rusted handcuff to which a chain was fastened. At the end of the chain was the companion cuff, shattered, evidently by a powerful blow, and half buried in the sand. As Kent leaned over the corpse, a fat, powerful, grizzled man with a metal badge on his shirt-front pushed forward.

"Them's cast-iron cuffs," he announced. "That kind ain't been used these forty years."

"What kind of a ship 'ud be carryin' 'em nowadays?" asked some one in the crowd.

"An' what kind of a seaman'd be putting of 'em on a lady's wrists?" growled a formidable voice, which Kent, looking up, perceived to have come from amid a growth of heavy white whiskers, sprouting from a weather-furrowed face.

"Seafaring man, aren't you?" inquired Kent.

"No more. Fifty year of it, man an' boy, has put me in harbor."

"That's Sailor Smith," explained Jarvis, who had assumed the duties of a self-appointed cicerone. "Not much about the sea and its ways, good or bad, that he don't know."

"True for you," confirmed several voices.

"Then, Mr. Smith, will you take a look at those lashings and tell me whether in your opinion they are the work of a sailor?" asked Kent.

The old hands fumbled expertly. The old face puckered. Judgment came forth presently.

"The knots is well enough. The lashin's a passable job. What gits me is the rope."

"Well, what's wrong with the rope?"

"Nothin' in pertic'ler. Only, I don't know what just that style of rope would be doin' on shipboard, unless it was to hang the old man's wash on."

"Suppose we lift this grating," Kent suggested.

At this the man with the badge interposed. "Say, who's runnin' this thing, anyhow? I'm sheriff here, an' this body ain't to be moved till a doctor has viewed it."

"Of course," said Kent mildly; "but I thought you might be interested to see, Mr. Sheriff, whether a ship's name was stamped somewhere on this grating."

"Well, I don't want any amachure learning me my business," declared the official importantly.

Nevertheless, he heaved the woodwork up on edge and held it so, while eager eyes scanned the under part. Murmurs of disappointment followed. In these Kent did not join. He had inserted a finger in a crevice of the splintered wood and had extracted some small object which he held in the palm of his hand, examining it thoughtfully.

"Wot ye got there?" demanded the sheriff.

Professor Kent stretched out his hand, disclosing a small grayish object.

"I should take it to be the cocoon of Ephestia kuchniella," he announced.

"An' wot does he do for a livin'?" inquired the official, waxing humorous.

"Destroys crops. It's a species of grain-moth."

"Oh!" grunted Schlager. "You're a bug collector, eh?"

"Exactly," answered the other, transferring his trove to his pocket.

Thereafter he seemed to lose interest in the center of mystery. Withdrawing to some distance, he paced up and down the shore, whistling lively tunes, not always in perfect accord, from which a deductive mind might have inferred that his soul was not in the music.

Suppose we lift this grating.

Nearer and nearer to high-water mark his pacing took him. Presently, though all the time continuing his whistling, he was scanning the tangled débris that the highest tide of the year had heaped up, almost against the cliff's foot. His whistling became slow, lugubrious, minor. It sagged. It died away. When it rose again, it was in march time, whereto the virtuoso stepped briskly toward the crowd. By this time the group had received several additions, but had suffered the loss of one of its component parts, the sheriff. Conjecture was buzzing from mouth to mouth as to the official's sudden defection.

"Whatever it was he got from the pocket," Kent heard one of the men say, "it started him quick."

"Looked to me like an envelope," hazarded some one.

"No," contradicted Sailor Smith; "paper would have been all pulped up by the water."

"Marked handkerchief, maybe," suggested another.

"Like as not," said Jarvis. "You bet that Len Schlager figured it out there was somethin' in it for him, anyways. I could see the money-gleam in his eye."

"That's right, too," confirmed the old sailor. "He looked just like that when he brought in that half-wit pedler, thinkin' he was the thousan'-dollar-reward thief last year."

"Trust Len Schlager to look out for number one first, an' be sheriff afterward," observed some one else.

Amidst this interchange of opinion, none of which was lost upon him, Professor Kent advanced and bent over the manacled corpse.

"Have to ask you to stand back, Perfessor," said Jarvis. "Len's appointed me special dep'ty till he comes back, and he says nobody is to lay finger on hide ner hair of the corpse; not even the doc, if he comes."

"Quite right," assented the other. "Sheriff Schlager exhibits commendable zeal and discretion."

"Wonder if he knowed the corpse?" suggested somebody in the crowd.

"Tell you who did, if he didn't," said another man.

"Who, then?"

"Elder Iry Dennett. Didn't none of you hear about his meetin' up with a strange woman yestiddy evenin'?"

"Shucks! This couldn't be that woman," said Jarvis. "How'd she come to be washed ashore from a wreck between last night and this morning?"

"How'd she come to be washed ashore from a wreck, anyway?" countered Sailor Smith. "The' ain't been no storm for a week, an' this body ain't been dead twenty-four hour."

"It plumb beats me," admitted Jarvis.

"Who is this Dennett?" asked Professor Kent.

"Iry? He's the town gab of Martindale Center. Does a little plumbin' an' tinkerin' on the side. Just now he's up to Cadystown. Took the ten-o'clock train last night."

"Then it was early when he met this woman?"

"Little after sundown. He was risin' the hill beyond the Nook-that's Sedgwick's place, the painter feller-when she come out of the shrubbery-pop! He quizzed her. Trust the Elder for that. But he didn't get much out of her, until he mentioned the Nook. Then she allowed she guessed she'd go there. An' he watched her go."

"You say a man named Sedgwick lives at the Nook. Is that Francis Sedgwick, the artist?" asked Kent.

"That's him," said Sailor Smith. "Paints right purty pictures. Lives there all alone with a Chinese cook."

"Well, the lady went down the hill," continued Jarvis, "just as Sedgwick come out to smoke a pipe on his stone wall. Iry thought he seemed su'prised when she bespoke him. They passed a few remarks, an' then they had some words, an' the lady laughed loud an' kinder scornful. He seemed to be pointin' at a necklace of queer, fiery pink stones thet she wore, and tryin' to get somethin' out of her. She turned away, an' he started to follow, when all of a sudden she grabbed up a rock an' let him have it-blip! Keeled him clean over. Then she ran away up the road toward Hawkill Cliffs. That's the way Iry Dennett tells it. But I ain't never heard of a story losin' anythin' in the tellin' when it come through Iry's lips."

"Well, this corpse ain't got no pink necklace," suggested somebody.

"Bodies sometimes gets robbed," said Sailor Smith.

Chester Kent stooped over the writhen face, again peering close. Then he straightened up and began pulling thoughtfully at the lobe of his ear.

He pulled and pulled, until, as if by that process, he had turned his face toward the cliff. His lips pursed. He began whistling softly, and tunelessly. His gaze was abstracted.

"Ain't seen nothin' to make you feel bad, have you, Perfessor?" inquired Temporary-Deputy-Sheriff Jarvis with some acerbity.

"Eh? What?" said Kent absently. "Seen anything? Nothing but what's there for any one to see."

Following his fixed gaze, the others studied the face of the cliff; all but Sailor Smith. He blinked near-sightedly at the corpse.

"Say," said he presently, "what's them queer little marks on the neck, under the ear?"

Back came Kent's eyes. "Those?" he said smiling. "Why, those are, one might suppose, such indentations as would be made in flesh by forcing a jewel setting violently against it, by a blow or strong impact."

"Then you think it was the wom-" began the old seaman when several voices broke in:

"There goes Len now!"

The sheriff's heavy figure appeared on the brow of the cliff, moving toward the village.

"Who is it with him?" inquired Kent.

"Gansett Jim," answered Jarvis.

"An Indian?"

"Gosh! You got good eyes!" said Jarvis. "He's more Indian than anything else. Comes from down Amagansett way, and gets his name from it."

"H-m! When did he arrive?"

"While you was trapesin' around up yonder."

"Did he see the body?"

"Yep. Just after the sheriff got whatever it was from the pocket, Gansett Jim hove in sight. Len went over to him quick, an' said somethin' to him. He come and give a look at the body. But he didn't say nothing. Only grunted."

"Never does say nothin', only grunt," put in Sailor Smith.

"That's right," agreed Jarvis. "Well, the sheriff tells me to watch the body. Then he says, 'An' I'll need somebody to help me. I'll take you, Jim.' So he an' the Indian goes away together."

Professor Kent nodded. He looked seaward where the reefs were now baring their teeth more plainly through the racing currents, and he sighed. That sigh meant, in effect, "I wanted to play with my tides and eddies, and here is work thrown at my very feet!" Then he bade the group farewell, and set off up the beach.

"Seems kinder int'rested, don't he?" remarked one of the natives.

"Who is he, anyway?" inquired another.

"Oh, he's a sort of a harmless scientific crank," explained Jarvis, with patronizing kindliness. "Comes from Washington. Something to do with the government work."

"Kinder loony, I think," conjectured a little, thin, piping man. "Musses and moves around like it."

"Is that so!" said Sailor Smith, who still had his eyes fixed on the scarified neck. "Well, I ain't any too dum sure thet he's as big a fool as some folks I know thet thinks likelier of theirselves."

Others, however, supported the little man's diagnosis, and there was some feeling against Sailor Smith who refused to make the vote unanimous.

"No, sir," he persisted sturdily. "That dude way of talkin' of his has got somethin' back of it, I'll bet. He seen there was somethin' queer about thet rope, an' he ast me about the knots, right off. He knows enough not to spit to wind'ard, an' don't you forgit it! Wouldn't surprise me none if he was p'intin' pretty nigh as clus up into the wind as Len Schlager."

Possibly the one supporter of the absent would have wavered in his loyalty had he seen the trove that Professor Chester Kent had carried unostentatiously from the beach, in his pocket, after picking it from the grating. It was the fuzzy cocoon of a small and quite unimportant insect. Perhaps the admiring Mr. Smith might even have come around to the majority opinion regarding Professor Kent's intellectual futility, could he have observed the absorbed interest with which the Washington scientist, seated on a boulder, opened up the cocoon, pricked it until the impotent inmate wriggled in protest, and then, casting it aside to perish, threw himself on his back and whistled the whole of Chopin's Funeral March, mostly off the key.

Between the roadway and the broad front lawn of the Nook a four-foot, rough stone wall interposes. Looking up from his painting, Francis Sedgwick beheld, in the glare of the afternoon sun, a spare figure rise alertly upon the wall, descend to the road, and rise again. He stepped to the open window and watched a curious progress. A scrubby-bearded man, clad in serviceable khaki, was performing a stunt, with the wall as a basis.

He was walking from east to west quite fast, and every third pace stepping upon the wall; stepping, Sedgwick duly noted, not jumping, the change of level being made without visible effort.

Now, Sedgwick himself was distinctly long of leg and limber, but he realized that he would be wholly incapable of duplicating the stranger's gracefully accomplished feat without violent and clumsy exertion. Consequently, he was interested. Leaning out of the window, he called:

"Hello, there!"

"Good afternoon," said the stranger, in a quiet cultivated voice.

"Would you mind telling me what you are doing on my wall."

"Not in the least," replied the bearded man, rising buoyantly into full view, and subsiding again with the rhythm of a wave.

"Well, what are you doing?"

"Taking a little exercise."

By this time, having reached the end of the wall, he turned and came back, making the step with his right leg instead of his left. Sedgwick hurried down-stairs and out into the roadway. The stranger continued his performance silently. At closer inspection it appealed to the artist as even more mysterious both in purport and execution than it had looked at a distance.

"Do you do that often?" he asked presently.

The gymnast paused, poised like a Mercury on the high coping. "Yes," said he. "Otherwise I shouldn't be able to do it at all."

"I should think not, indeed! Has it any particular utility, that form of exercise?"

"Certainly. It is in pursuance of a theory of self-defense."

"What in the world has wall-hopping to do with self-defense?"

"I shall expound," said the stranger in professional tones, taking a seat by the unusual method of letting himself down on one leg while holding the other at right angles to his body. "Do you know anything of jiu-jutsu?"

"Very little."

"In common with most Americans. For that reason alone the Japanese system is highly effective here, not so effective in Japan. You perceive there the basis of my theory."

"No, I don't perceive it at all."

"A system of defense is effective in proportion to its unfamiliarity. That is all."

"Then your system consists in stepping up on a wall and diving into obscurity on the farther side, perhaps," suggested Sedgwick ironically.

"Defense, I said; not escape. Escape is perhaps preferable to defense, but not always so practicable. No; the wall merely served as a temporary gymnasium while I was waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"For you."

"You have distinctly the advantage of me," said Sedgwick, with a frown; for he was in no mood to welcome strange visitors.

"To return to my theory of self-defense," said the other imperturbably. "My wall exercise serves to keep limber and active certain muscles that in the average man are half atrophied. You are familiar with the ostrich?"

"With his proverbial methods of obfuscation," replied Sedgwick.

The other smiled. "That, again, is escape or attempted escape. My reference was to other characteristics. However, I shall demonstrate." He rose on one foot with an ease that made the artist stare, descended, selected from the roadway a stone of ordinary cobble size, and handed it to Sedgwick.

"Let that lie on the palm of your hand," said he, "and hold it out, waist high."

As he spoke he was standing two feet from the other, to his right. Sedgwick did as he was requested. As his hand took position, there was a twist of the bearded man's lithe body, a sharp click, and the stone, flying in a rising curve, swished through the leafage of a lilac fifty feet away.

"How did you do that?" cried the artist.

The other showed a slight indentation on the inside of his right boot heel, and then swung his right foot slowly and steadily up behind his left knee, and let it lapse into position again. "At shoulder height," he explained, "I could have done the same; but it would have broken your hand."

"I see," said the other, adding with distaste, "but to kick an opponent! Why, even as a boy I was taught-"

"We were not speaking of child's play," said the visitor coolly; "nor am I concerned with the rules of the prize-ring, as applied to my theory. When one is in danger, one uses knife or gun, if at hand. I prefer a less deadly and more effective weapon. Kicking sidewise, either to the front or to the rear, I can disarm a man, break his leg, or lay him senseless. It is the special development of such muscles as the sartorius and plantaris," he ran his long fingers down from the outside of his thigh round to the inside of his ankle, "that enables a human being, with practise, to kick like an ostrich. Since you found me exercising on your property, I owe you this explanation. I hope you won't prosecute for trespass, Mr. Long-Lean-Leggy Sedgwick."

"Leggy!" The artist had whirled at the name. "Nobody's called me that for ten years."

"Just ten years ago that you graduated, wasn't it?"

"Yes. Then I knew you in college. You must have been before my class."

The bearded one nodded. "Senior to your freshman," said he.

The younger man scrutinized him. "Chester Kent!" said he softly. "What on earth are you doing behind that bush?"

Kent caressed the maligned whiskers. "Utility," he explained. "Patent, impenetrable mosquito screen. I've been off in the wilds, and am-or was-going back presently."

"Not until you've stopped long enough to get reacquainted," declared Sedgwick. "Just at present you're going to stay to dinner."

"Very good. Just now you happen to be in my immediate line of interest. It is a fortunate circumstance for me, to find you here; possibly for you, too."

"Most assuredly," returned the other with heartiness. "Come in on the porch and have a hammock and pipe."

----

Old interests sprang to life and speech between them. And from the old interests blossomed the old easy familiarity that is never wholly lost to those who have been close friends in college days. Presently Francis Sedgwick was telling his friend the story of his feverish and thwarted ten years in the world. Within a year of his graduation his only surviving relative had died, willing to him a considerable fortune, the income of which he used in furtherance of a hitherto suppressed ambition to study art. Paris, his Mecca, was first a task-mistress, then a temptress, finally a vampire. Before succumbing he had gone far, in a few years, toward the development of a curious technique of his own. Followed then two years of dissipation, a year of travel to recuperate, and the return to Paris, which was to be once more the task-mistress. But, to his terror and self-loathing, he found the power of application gone. The muscles of his mind had become flabby. He quoted to Kent, with bitterness, the terrible final lines of Rossetti's Known in Vain:

"When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze

After their life sailed by, and hold their breath,

Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze

Thenceforth their incommunicable ways

Follow the desultory feet of Death?"

"'When Work and Will awake too late,'" repeated Kent. "But is it too late in your case? Surely not, since you're here, and at your task."

"But think of the waste, man! Yet, here I am, as you say, and still able to fight. All by virtue of a woman's laugh; the laugh of a woman without virtue. It was at the Moulin de la Galette-perhaps you know the dance hall on the slope of Montmartre-and she was one of the dancers, the wreck of what had once been beauty and, one must suppose, innocence. Probably she thought me too much absinthe-soaked to hear or understand, as I sat half asleep at my table. At all events she answered, full-voiced, her companion's question, 'Who is the drunken foreigner?' by saying, 'He was an artist. The studios talked of him five years ago. Look at him now! That is what life does to us, mon ami. I'm the woman of it: that's the man of it.' I staggered up, made her a bow and a promise, and left her laughing. Last month I redeemed the promise; sent her the first thousand dollars I made by my own work, and declared my debt discharged."

A heavy cloud of smoke issued from Kent's mouth, followed by this observation: "That formula about the inability to lift one's self by one's own boot-straps fails to apply in the spiritual world."

"Right! You can pull yourself out of the ditch that way; but afterward comes the long hillside. Life has seemed all tilted on edge, at times, and pretty slippery, with little enough to cling to."

"Work," suggested Kent briefly.

"Wisdom lurks behind your screen. Work is the answer."

"Good or bad, it's the only thing. Which kind is yours?"

"Presently you shall sit in judgment. Meantime, suppose you account for yourself."

Chester Kent stretched himself luxuriously. "A distinguished secretary of state has remarked that all the news worth telling on any subject can be transmitted by wire for twenty-five cents. The short and simple annals of the poor in my case can be recorded within that limit. 'Postgraduate science. Agricultural Department job. Lectures. Invention. Judiciary Department expert. Signed, Chester Kent.' Ten words-count them-ten."

"Interesting, but unsatisfying," retorted his friend. "Can't you expand a bit? I suppose you haven't any dark secret in your life?"

"No secret, dark or light," sighed the other. "The newspapers won't let me have."

"Eh? Won't let you? Am I to infer that you've become a famous person? Pardon the ignorance of expatriation. Have you discovered a new disease, or formulated a new theory of life, or become a golf champion, or a senator, or a freak aviator, or invented perpetual motion? Do you possess titles, honors, and ribboned decorations? Ought I to bat my brow against the floor in addressing you? What are you, anyway?"

"What I told you, an expert in the service of the Department of Justice."

"On the scientific side?"

"Why-yes, generally speaking. I like to flatter myself that my pursuit is scientific."

"Pursuit? What do you pursue?"

"Men and motives."

Sedgwick's intelligent eyes widened. "Wait," he said, "something occurs to me, an article in a French journal about a wonderful new American expert in criminology, who knows all there is to know, and takes only the most abstruse cases. I recall now that the article called him 'le Professeur Chêtre Kennat.' That would be about as near as they would come to your name."

"It's a good deal nearer than that infernal French journalist whom Wiley brought to my table at the Idlers' Club got to the facts," stated Kent.

"Then you are the Professor Kent! But look here! The Frenchman made you out a most superior species of highfalutin detective, working along lines peculiarly your own-"

"Rot!" interjected Kent. "The only lines a detective can work along successfully are the lines laid down for him by the man he is after."

"Sounds more reasonable than romantic," admitted the artist. "Come now, Kent, open up and tell me something about yourself."

"Only last month a magazine put that request in writing, and accompanied it with an offer of twenty-five hundred dollars-which I didn't accept. However, as I may wish to ask you a number of leading questions later, I'll answer yours now. You remember I got into trouble my senior year with the college authorities, by proving the typhoid epidemic direct against a forgotten defect in the sewer system. It nearly cost me my diploma; but it helped me too, later, for a scientist in the Department of Agriculture at Washington learned of it, and sent for me after graduation. He talked to me about the work that a man with the true investigation instinct-which he thought I had-could do, by employing his abilities along strictly scientific lines; and he mapped out for me a three-year's postgraduate course, which I had just about enough money to take. While I specialized on botany, entomology, and bacteriology, I picked up a working knowledge of other branches; chemistry, toxicology, geology, mineralogy, physiology, and most of the natural sciences, having been blessed with an eager and catholic curiosity about the world we live in.

"Once in the Department, I found myself with a sort of roving commission. I worked under such men as Wiley, Howard, and Merriam, and learned from them something of the infinite and scrupulous patience that truly original scientific achievement demands. At first my duties were largely those of minor research. Then, by accident largely, I chanced upon the plot to bull the cotton market by introducing the boll weevil into the uninfested cotton area, and checked that. Soon afterward I was put on the 'deodorized meat' enterprise, and succeeded in discovering the scheme whereby it was hoped to sell spoiled meat for good. You might have heard of those cases; but you would hardly have learned of the success in which I really take a pride, the cultivation of a running wild grape to destroy Rhus Toxicodendron, the common poison ivy. What spare time I had I devoted to experimenting along mechanical lines, and patented an invention that has been profitable. Some time ago the Department of Justice borrowed me on a few cases with a scientific bearing, and more recently offered me incidental work with them on such favorable terms that I resigned my other position. The terms include liberal vacations, one of which I am now taking. And here I am! Is that sufficient?"

"Hardly. All this suggests the arts of peace. What about your forty-horse-power kick? You don't practise that for drawing-room exhibitions, I take it?"

"Sometimes," confessed the scientist, "I have found myself at close quarters with persons of dubious character. The fact is, that an ingenious plot to get rid of a very old friend, Doctor Lucius Carter the botanist, drew me into the criminal line, and since then, that phase of investigation has seemed fairly to obtrude itself on me, officially and unofficially. Even up here, where I hoped to enjoy a month's rest-Do you know," he said, breaking off, "that you have a most interesting inset of ocean currents hereabouts?"

"Of course. Lonesome Cove. But kindly finish that 'even up here'. I recollect your saying that you were waiting for me. Haven't traced any scientific crime to my door, have you?"

"Let me forget my work for a little while," pleaded his visitor, "and look at yours."

Sedgwick rose. "Come up-stairs," he said, and led the way to the big, bare, bright studio.

From the threshold Chester Kent delivered an opinion, after one approving survey. "You really work, I see."

"I really do. Where do you see it, though?"

"All over the place. No draperies or fripperies or fopperies of art here. The barer the room, the more work done in it."

He walked over to a curious contrivance resembling a small hand-press, examined it, surveyed the empty easel, against which were leaning, face in, a number of pictures, all of a size, and turned half a dozen of them over, ranging them and stepping back for examination. Standing before them, he whistled a long passage from La Bohème, and had started to rewhistle it in another key, when the artist broke in with some impatience.

"Well?"

"Good work," pronounced Kent quietly, and in some subtle way the commonplace words conveyed to their hearer the fact that the man who spoke them knew.

"It's the best there is in me, at least," said Sedgwick.

Kent went slowly around the walls, keenly examining, silently appraising. There were landscapes, genre bits, studies of the ocean in its various moods, flashes of pagan imaginings, nature studies; a wonderful picture of wild geese settling from a flight; a no less striking sketch of a mink, startled as he crept to drink among the sedges; a group of country children at hop-scotch on the sands; all the varied subjects handled with a deftness of truth and drawing, and colored with a clear softness quite individual.

"Have you found or founded a new system of coloring?" asked Kent as he moved among the little masterpieces. "No; don't tell me." He touched one of the surfaces delicately. "It's not paint, and it's not pastel. Oh, I see! They're all of one size-of course." He glanced at the heavy mechanism near the easel. "They're color prints."

Sedgwick nodded. "Monotypes," said he. "I paint on copper, make one impress, and then-phut!-a sponge across the copper makes each one an original."

"You certainly obtain your effects."

"The printing seems to refine the color. For instance, moonlight on white water, a thing I've never been able to approach, either in straight oils or water. See here."

From behind a cloth he drew a square, and set it on the easel. Kent whistled again, casual fragments of light and heavy opera intermingled with considerative twitches of his ear.

"It's the first one I've given a name to," said Sedgwick. "I call it The Rough Rider."

A full moon, brilliant amid blown cloud-rack, lighted up the vast procession of billows charging in upon a near coast. In the foreground a corpse, the face bent far up and back from the spar to which it was lashed, rode with wild abandon headlong at the onlooker, on the crest of a roaring surge. The rest was infinite clarity of distance and desolation.

"The Rough Rider!" murmured Kent; then, with a change of tone, "For sale?"

"I don't know," hesitated the artist. "Fact is, I like that about well enough to keep."

"I'll give you five hundred dollars for it."

"Five hundred! Man alive! A hundred is the most I've ever got for any of my prints!"

"The offer stands."

"But, see here, Kent, can you afford it? Government salaries don't make men rich, do they?"

"Oh, I'm rich enough," said the other impatiently. "I told you I'd made inventions. And I can certainly afford to buy it better than you can afford to keep it here."

"What's that?" asked the painter, surprised.

Kent repeated his final sentence, with slow emphasis. "Do you understand what I mean?" he asked, looking flatly into Sedgwick's eyes.

"No, not in the least. Another suggestion of mystery. Do you always deal in this sort of thing?"

"Very seldom. However, if you don't understand so much the better. When did you finish this picture?"

"Yesterday."

"H-m! Has any one else seen it?"

"That old fraud of a plumber, Elder Dennett, saw me working on it yesterday, when he was doing some repairing here, and remarked that it gave him the creeps."

"Dennett? Well, then that's all up," said Kent, as if speaking to himself. "There's a streak of superstition in all these New Englanders. He'd be sure to interpret it as a confession before the fact. However, Elder Dennett left this morning for a trip to Cadystown. That's so much to the good."

"He may have left for a trip to Hadestown for all I care," stated Sedgwick with conviction. "What's it all about, anyway?"

"I'll tell you, as soon as I've mulled it over a little. Just let me cool my mind down with some more of your pictures." He turned to the wall border again, and faced another picture out. "What's this? You seem to be something of a dab in black and white, too."

"Oh, that's an imaginary face," said Sedgwick carelessly.

"Imaginary face studied from various angles," commented Kent. "It's a very lovely face, and the most wistful I've ever seen. A fairy, prisoned on earth by cockcrow, might wear some such expression of startled wondering purity, I fancy."

"Poetry as well as mystery! Kent, you grow and expand on acquaintance."

"There is poetry in your study of that imaginary fay. Imaginary! Um-hum!" continued Kent dryly, as he stooped to the floor. "I suppose this is an imaginary hairpin, too."

"My Chinaman-" began Sedgwick quickly, when the other caught him up.

"Don't be uneasy. I'm not going to commit the bêtise of asking who she is."

"If you did, I give you my word of honor I couldn't tell you. I only wish I knew!"

There was silence between them for a moment; then the painter broke out with the air of one who takes a resolution:

"See here, Kent! You're a sort of detective, aren't you?"

"I've been called so."

"And you like my picture of The Rough Rider?"

"Five hundred dollars' worth."

"You can have that and any other picture in my studio, except this one," he indicated the canvas with the faces, "if you'll find out for me who she is."

"That might be done. We shall see. But frankly, Sedgwick, there's a matter of more importance-"

"Importance? Good heavens, man! There's nothing so important in this world!"

"Oh, is it as bad as that?"

A heavy knock sounded from below, followed by the Chinaman's voice, intermingled with boyish accents demanding Sedgwick in the name of the Western Union Telegraph Company.

"Send him up," ordered Sedgwick, and the boy arrived; but not before Kent had quietly removed The Rough Rider from its place of exhibit.

"Special from the village," announced young Mercury. "Sign here."

After the signature had been duly set down, and the signer had read his message with knit brows, the urchin lingered, big with news.

"Say, heard about the body on the beach?"

Kent turned quickly, to see Sedgwick's face. It was interested, but unmoved as he replied:

"No. Where was it found?"

"Lonesome Cove. Woman. Dressed swell. Washed up on a grating last night or this morning."

"It's curious how they all come in here, isn't it?" said the artist to Kent. "This is the third this summer."

"And it's a corkerino!" said the boy. "Sheriff's on the case. Body was all chained up, they say."

"I'm sure they need you at the office to help circulate the news, my son," said Kent. "And I'll bet you this quarter, payable in advance, that you can't get back in half an hour on your wheel."

With a grin the boy took the coin. "I got yer," he said, and was off.

"And now, Sedgwick," said Kent decisively, "if I'm to help you, suppose you tell me all that you know about the woman who called on you last evening?"

"Last evening? Ah, that wasn't the girl of the picture. It's an interminable six days since I've seen her."

"No; I know it wasn't she, having seen your picture, and since then your visitor of last night. The question is, who was it?"

"Wait! How did you know that a woman came here last night?"

"From common gossip."

"And where have you seen her since?"

"On the beach, at Lonesome Cove."

"Lonesome Cove," repeated Sedgwick mechanically. Then with a startled glance: "Not the dead woman!"

Kent nodded, watching him closely. For a space of four heart-beats-one very slow, and three very quick-there was silence between them. Kent broke it.

"Do you see now the wisdom of frankness?"

"You mean that I shall be accused of having a hand in her death?"

"Strongly suspected, at least."

"On what basis?"

"You are the last person known to have seen her alive."

"Surely that isn't enough?"

"Not of itself. There's a bruise back of your right ear."

Involuntarily Sedgwick's hand went to the spot.

"Who gave it to you?" pursued Kent.

"You know it all without my telling you," cried Sedgwick. "But I never saw the woman before in my life, Kent-I give you my word of honor! She came and went, but who she is or why she came or where she went I have no more idea than you have. Perhaps not nearly so much."

"There you are wrong. I'm depending on you to tell me about her."

"Not if my life hung on it. And how could her being found drowned on the beach be connected with me?"

"I didn't say that she was found drowned on the beach."

"You did! No; pardon me. It was the messenger boy. But you said that her body was found in Lonesome Cove."

"That is quite a different matter."

"She wasn't drowned?"

"I should be very much surprised if the autopsy showed any water in the lungs."

"But the boy said that the body was lashed to a grating, and that there were chains on it. Is that true?"

"It was lashed to a grating, and manacled."

"Manacled? What a ghastly mystery!" Sedgwick dropped his chin in meditation. "If she wasn't drowned, then she was murdered and thrown overboard from a boat. Is that it?"

Chester Kent smiled inscrutably. "Suppose you let me do the questioning a while. You can give no clue whatsoever to the identity of your yesterday's visitor?"

There was the slightest possible hesitation before the artist replied, "None at all."

"If I find it difficult to believe that, what will the villagers think of it when Elder Dennett returns from Cadystown and tells his story, as he is sure to do?"

"Does Dennett know the woman?"

"No; but it isn't his fault that he doesn't. He did his best in the interviewing line when he met her on her way to your place."

"She wasn't on her way to my place," objected Sedgwick.

"Dennett got the notion that she was. Accordingly, with the true home-bred delicacy of our fine old New England stock, he hid behind a bush and watched."

"Did he overhear our conversation?"

"He was too far away. He saw the attack on you. Now, just fit together these significant bits of fact. The body of a woman, dead by violence, is found on the beach not far from here. The last person, as far as is known, to have seen her alive is yourself. She called on you, and there was a colloquy, apparently vehement, between you, culminating in the assault upon you. She hurried away. One might well guess that later you followed her to her death."

"I did follow her," said Sedgwick in a low tone.

"For what purpose?"

"To find out who she was."

"Which you didn't succeed in doing?"

"She was too quick for me. The blow of the rock had made me giddy, and she got away among the thickets."

"That's a pity. One more point of suspicion. Dennett, you say, saw your picture, The Rough Rider. He will tell every one about it, you may be sure."

"What of it?"

"The strange coincidence of the subject, and the apparent manner of the unknown's death."

"People will hardly suspect that I killed her and set her adrift for a model, I suppose," said the artist bitterly; "particularly as Dennett can tell them that the picture was finished before her death."

"Not that; but there will be plenty of witch-hangers among the Yankee populace, ready to believe that a fiend inspired both picture and murder in your mind. Why, the very fact of your being an artist would be prima facie evidence of a compact with the devil, to some people. And you must admit a certain diabolical ghastliness in that painting."

"Evidently some devil of ill fate is mixing up in my affairs. What's your advice in the matter?"

"Tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," suggested Chester Kent.

"Easily done. The question is whether you'll believe it."

"If I hadn't felt pretty sure of your innocence, I shouldn't have opened the case to you as I've done. I'll believe the truth if you tell it, and tell it all."

"Very well. I was sitting on my wall when the woman came down the road. I noticed her first when she stopped to look back, and her absurd elegance of dress, expensive and ill fitting, attracted my closer attention. She was carrying a bundle, wrapped in strong paper. It seemed to be heavy, for she shifted it from hand to hand. When she came near, I spoke to her-"

"You spoke to her first?"

"Well, we spoke simultaneously."

"Why should you speak to her, if she was a stranger to you?"

"See here, Kent! You'll have to let me tell this in my own way, if I'm to tell it at all."

"So long as you do tell it. What did she say to you?"

"She asked me the time."

"Casually?"

"Not as if she were making it a pretext to open a conversation, if that is what you mean."

"It is."

"Certainly it wasn't that. She seemed anxious to know. In fact, I think she used the word 'exact'; 'the exact time,' she said."

"Presumably she was on her way to an appointment, then."

"Very likely. When I told her, she seemed relieved; I might even say relaxed. As if from the strain of nervous haste, you know."

"Good. And then?"

"She thanked me, and asked if I were Mr. Sedgwick. I answered that I was, and suggested that she make good by completing the introduction."

"She wasn't a woman of your own class, then?"

Sedgwick looked puzzled. "Well, no. I thought not, then, or I shouldn't have been so free and easy with her. For one thing, she was painted badly, and the perspiration, running down her forehead, had made her a sight. Yet, I don't know: her voice was that of a cultivated person. Her manner was awkward and her dress weird for that time of day, and, for all that, she carried herself like a person accustomed to some degree of consideration. That I felt quite plainly. I felt, too, something uncanny about her. Her eyes alone would have produced that impression. They were peculiarly restless and brilliant."

"Insane?" questioned Kent.

"Not wholly sane, certainly; but it might have been drugs. That suggested itself to me."

"A possibility. Proceed."

"She asked what point of the headland gave the best view. 'Anywhere from the first rise on is good,' I said. 'It depends on what you wish to see.'-'My ship coming in.' said she.-'It will be a far view, then,' I told her. 'This is a coast of guardian reefs.'-'What difference?' she said, and then gave me another surprise; for she quoted:

"'And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond-

Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.'"

"That's interesting," remarked Kent. "Casual female wayfarers aren't given to quoting The House of Life."

"Nor casual ships to visiting this part of the coast. However, there was no ship. I looked for myself, when I was trying to find the woman later. What are you smiling at?"

"Nothing. I'm sorry I interrupted."

"She walked away from me a few paces, but turned and came back at once.

"'I follow my star,' she said, pointing to a planet that shone low over the sea. 'Therein lies the only true happiness; to dare and to follow.'

"'It's a practise which has got many people into trouble and some into jail,' I remarked.

"'Do not be flippant,' she replied in her deep tones. 'Perhaps under that star you move on dim paths to an unknown glory.'

"'See here,' I broke out, 'you're making me uncomfortable. If you've got something to tell, please tell it, kindly omitting the melodrama.'

"'Remember this meeting,' she said in a tone of solemn command; 'for it may mark an epoch in your life. Some day in the future I may send for you and recall to-day to your mind by what I have just said. In that day you will know the hidden things that are clear only to the chosen minds. Perhaps you will be the last person but one to see me as I now am.'"

Kent pulled nervously at the lobe of his ear. "Is it possible that she foresaw her death?" he murmured.

"It would look so, in the light of what has happened, wouldn't it? Yet there was an uncanny air of joyousness about her, too."

"I don't like it," announced Kent. "I do not like it!"

By which he meant that he did not understand it. What Chester Kent does not understand, Chester Kent resents.

"Love-affair, perhaps," suggested the artist. "A woman in love will take any risk of death. However," he added, rubbing his bruised head reminiscently, "she had a very practical bent, for a romantic person. After her mysterious prophecy she started on. I called to her to come back or I would follow and make her explain herself."

"As to what?"

"Everything: her being there, her actions, her-her apparel, the jewelry, you know, and all that."

"You've said nothing about jewelry."

"Haven't I? Well, when she turned-"

"Just a moment. Was it the jewelry that you were going to speak of when you first accosted her?"

"Yes, it was. Some of it was very valuable, I judge. Wasn't it found on the body?"

"No."

"Not? Robbery, then, probably. Well, she came back at a stride. Her eyes were alive with anger. There came a torrent of words from her; strong words, too. Nothing of the well-bred woman left there. I insisted on knowing who she was, and she burst out on me with laughter that was, somehow, more insulting than her speech. But when I told her that I'd find out about her if I had to follow her into the sea, she stopped laughing fast enough. Before I could guard myself she had caught up a rock from the road and let me have it. I went over like a tenpin. When I got up, she was well along toward the cliffs, and I never did find her trail in that maze of copses and thickets."

"Show me your relative positions when she attacked you."

The artist placed Kent, and moved off five paces. "About like that," he said.

"Did she throw overhand or underhand?"

"It was so quick I hardly know. But I should say a short overhand snap. It came hard enough!"

"I do not like it at all," said Kent again.

He wandered disconsolately and with half-closed eyes about the room, until he blundered into collision with a cot-lounge in the corner, spread with cushions. These he heaped up, threw his coat over them, stretched himself out with his feet propped high on the mound just erected, and closed his eyes.

"Sleepy?" inquired Sedgwick.

"Busy," retorted his guest.

"Like some more pillows?"

"No; I'd like ten minutes of silence." The speaker opened one eye. "At the end of that time perhaps you'll think better of it."

"Of what?"

"Of concealing an essentially important part of your experience, which has to do, I think, with the jewelry."

At the end of the ten minutes, when Kent opened both eyes, his friend forestalled him with another query.

"You say that no jewels were found on the body. Was there any other mark of identification?"

"If there was, the sheriff got away with it before I saw it."

"How can you be sure, then, that the dead woman was my visitor?"

"Dennett mentioned a necklace. On the crushed flesh of the dead woman's neck there is the plain impress of a jewel setting. Now, come, Sedgwick! If I'm to help you in this, you must help me. Had you ever seen that necklace before?"

"Yes," was the reply, given with obvious reluctance.

"Where?"

"On the neck of the girl of my picture."

Kent's fingers went to his ear, pulling at the lobe until that unoffending pendant stretched like rubber. "You're sure?" he asked.

"There couldn't be any mistake. The stones were matched rose-topazes; you mightn't find another like it in the whole country."

Kent whistled, soft and long. "I'm afraid, my boy," he said at length, "I'm very much afraid that you'll have to tell me the whole story of the romance of the pictured face; and this time without reservation."

"That's what I've been guarding against," retorted the other. "It isn't a thing that I can tell, man to man. Don't you understand? Or," he added savagely, "do you misunderstand?"

"No, I don't misunderstand," answered Kent very gently. "I know there are things that can't be spoken, not because they are shameful, but because they are sacred. Yet I've got to know about her. Here! I have it. When I'm gone, sit down and write it out for me, simply and fully, and send it to my hotel as soon as it is done. You can do that, can't you?"

"Yes, I can do that," decided Sedgwick, after some consideration.

"Good! Then give me some dinner. And let's forget this grisly thing for a time, and talk of the old days. Whatever became of Harkness, of our class, do you know?"

Between them that evening was no further mention of the strange body in Lonesome Cove.

Being a single autobiographical chapter from the life of Francis Sedgwick, with editorial comment by Professor Chester Kent.

Dear Kent: Here goes! I met her first on June 22, at three o'clock in the afternoon. Some wonderful cloud effects after a hard rain had brought me out into the open. I had pitched my easel in the hollow, on the Martindale Road, so as to get that clump of pine against the sky. There I sat working away with a will, when I heard the drumming of hoofs, and a horse with a girl in the saddle came whizzing round the turn almost upon me. Just there the rain had made a puddle of thick sticky mud, the mud-pie variety. As the horse went by at full gallop, a fine, fat, mud pie rose, soared through the air, and landed in the middle of my painting. I fairly yelped.

To get it all off was hopeless. However, I went at it, and was cursing over the job when I heard the hoofs coming back, and the rider pulled up close to me.

"I heard you cry out," said a voice, very full and low. "Did I hurt you? I hope not."

"No," I said without looking up. "Small thanks to you that you didn't!"

My tone silenced her for a moment. Somehow, though, I got the feeling that she was amused more than abashed at my resentment. And her voice was suspiciously meek when she presently spoke again.

"You're an artist, aren't you?"

"No," I said, busily scraping away at my copperplate. "I'm an archeologist, engaged in exhuming an ancient ruin from a square mile of mud."

She laughed; but in a moment became grave again. "I'm so sorry!" she said. "I know I shouldn't come plunging around turns in that reckless way. May I-I should like to-buy your picture?"

"You may not," I replied.

"That isn't quite fair, is it?" she asked. "If I have done damage, I should be allowed to repair it."

"Repair?" said I. "How do you propose to do it? I suppose that you think a picture that can be bought for a hundred-dollar bill can be painted with a hundred-dollar bill."

"No; I'm not altogether a Philistine," she said, and I looked up at her for the first time. Her face-(Elision and Comment by Kent: I know her face from the sketches. Why could he not have described the horse? However, there's one point clear: she is a woman of means.)

She said, "I don't wonder you're cross. And I'm truly sorry. Is it quite ruined?"

At that I recovered some decency of manner. "Forgive a hermit," I said, "who doesn't see enough people to keep him civilized. The daub doesn't matter."

She leaned over from the saddle to examine the picture. "Oh, but it isn't a daub!" she protested. "I-I know a little about pictures. It's very interesting and curious. But why do you paint it on copper?"

I explained.

"Oh!" she said. "I should so like to see your prints!"

"Nothing easier," said I. "My shack is just over the hill."

"And there is a Mrs.-" her eyes suggested that I fill the blank.

"Sedgwick?" I finished. "No. There is no one but my aged and highly respectable Chinaman to play propriety. But in the case of a studio, les convenances are not so rigid but that one may look at pictures unchaperoned."

"I'm afraid it wouldn't do," she answered, smiling. "No, I'll have to wait until-" A shadow passed over her face. "I'm afraid I'll have to give it up."

Chance settled that point then and there. As she finished, she was in my arms. The girth had loosened, and the saddle had turned with her. I had barely time to twist her foot from the stirrup when the brute of a horse bolted. As it was, her ankle got a bit of a wrench. She turned quite white, and cried out a little. In a moment she was herself again.

"King Cole has been acting badly all day," she said. "I shall have a time catching him." She limped forward a few steps.

"Here, that won't do!" said I. "Let me."

"You couldn't get near him-though, perhaps, if you had some salt-"

"I can get some at my place," said I, gathering up my things. "Your horse is headed that way. You'd better come along and rest there while Ching Lung and I round up your mount."

(Comment by C. K.: Here follows more talk, showing how young people imperceptibly and unconsciously cement an acquaintance; but not one word upon the vital point of how far the horse seemed to have come, whether he was ridden out, or fresh, etc.)

At the bungalow I called Ching, and we set out with a supply of salt. King Cole (Comment by C. K.: Probably a dead-black horse) was coy for a time, before he succumbed to temptation. On my return I found my visitor in the studio. She had said that she knew a little about pictures. She knew more than a little, a good deal, in fact, and talked most intelligently about them. I don't say this simply because she tried, before she went, to buy some of mine. When I declined to sell she seemed put out.

"But surely these prints of yours aren't the work of an amateur," she said. "You sell?"

"Oh, yes, I sell-when I can. But I don't sell without a good bit of bargaining; particularly when I suspect my purchaser of wishing to make amends by a purchase."

"It isn't that at all," she said earnestly. "I want the pictures for themselves."

"Call this a preliminary then, and come back when you have more time."

She shook her head, and there was a shadow over the brightness of her face. "I'm afraid not," she said. "But I have enjoyed talking again with some one who knows and loves the best in art. After all," she added with a note of determination, almost of defiance, "there is no reason why I shouldn't sometime."

"Then I may look for you again?" I asked.

She nodded as she moved out across the porch. "If you'll promise to sell me any print I may choose. Good-by. And thank you so much, Mr. Sedgwick!"

She held out her hand. It was a hand for a sculptor to model, as beautiful and full of character as her face. (Comment by C. K.: Bosh!) Afterward I remembered that never again in our friendship did I see it ungloved. (Comment by C. K.: "Bosh" retracted. Some observation in that!)

"Au revoir, then," I said; "but you have the advantage of me, you see. I don't know what to call you at all."

She hesitated; then, with a little soft quiver of her eyelids, which I afterward learned to identify as an evidence of amusement, said, "Daw is a nice name, don't you think?" (Comment by C. K.: False name, of course; but highly probable first name is Marjorie.) "By the way, what time is it?"

"Quarter to five, Miss Daw."

She smiled at the name. "King Cole will have to do his best, if I am to be back for dinner. Good-by." (Comment by C. K.: Good! The place where she is staying is a good way off, assuming a seven-thirty dinner-hour; say twelve to fifteen miles.)

That was the first of many visits, of days that grew in radiance for me. It isn't necessary for me to tell you, Kent, how in our talks I came to divine in her a spirit as wistful and pure as her face. You do not want a love story from me; yet that is what it was for me almost from the first. Not openly, though. There was that about her which held me at arms' length: the mystery of her, her quickly-given trust in me, a certain strained look that came into her face, like the startled attention of a wild thing poised for flight, whenever I touched upon the personal note. Not that I ever questioned her. That was the understanding between us: that I should leave to her her incognita without effort to penetrate it.

While I talked, I sketched her and studied her. Young as she seemed, she had been much about the world, knew her Europe, had met and talked with men of many pursuits, and had taken from all sources tribute for her mind and color for her imagination. She had read widely, too, and had an individual habit of thought. Combined with all her cosmopolitanism was a quaint and profound purity of standards. I remember her saying once-it was one of her rare flashes of self-revelation-"I am an anomaly and an anachronism, a Puritan in modern society." After her first visit she did not ride on her horse; but came across lots and through the side hedge, swinging down the hillside yonder with her light dipping stride that always recalled to me the swoop of a swallow, her gloved hands usually holding a slender stick.

All those sketches that you saw were but studies for a more serious attempt to catch and fix her personality. (Comment by C. K.: Couldn't he have given me in two words her height and approximate weight?) I did it in pastel, and, if I missed something of her tender and changeful coloring, I at least caught the ineffable wistfulness of her expression, the look of one hoping against hope for an unconfessed happiness. Probably I had put more of myself into it than I had meant. A man is likely to when he paints with his heart as well as his brain and hand. When it was done I made a little frame for it, and lettered on the frame this line:

"And her eyes dreamed against a distant goal."

It was the next day that she read the line. I saw the color die from her face and flood back again.

"Why did you set that line there?" she breathed, her eyes fixed on me with a strange expression. (Comment by C. K.: Rossetti again. The dead woman of the beach quoted "The House of Life," also.)

"Why not?" I asked. "It seems to express something in you which I have tried to embody in the picture. Don't you like it?"

She repeated the line softly, making pure music of it. "I love it," she said.

At that, I spoke as it is given to a man to speak to one woman in the world when he has found her. She listened, with her eyes on the pictured face. But when I said to her, "You, who have all my heart, and whose name, even, I have not-is there no word for me," she rose, and threw out her hands in a gesture that sent a chill through me.

"Oh, no! No!" she cried vehemently. "Nothing-except good-by. Oh, why did you speak?"

I stood and watched her go. At the end of the garden walk she stooped and picked a rose with her gloved fingers, and as she disappeared in the thicket at the top of the hill I thought she half turned to look. That was five interminable days ago. I have not seen her since. I feel it is her will that I shall never see her again. And I must! You understand, Kent, you must find her!

I forgot to tell you that when I was sketching her I asked if she could bring something pink to wear, preferably coral. She came the next time with a string of the most beautiful rose-topazes I have ever seen, set in a most curious old gold design. It was that necklace and none other that the woman with the bundle wore, half concealed, when she came here.

To-day-it is yesterday really, since I am finishing this at three A. M.-the messenger boy brought me a telegram. It was from my love. It had been sent from Boston, and it read:

"Destroy the picture, for my sake. It tells too much of both of us."

The message was unsigned. I have destroyed the picture. Help me! --F. S.