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'Ce Ydcow m Ielter' ' ,riP,-I 1911 Johmllon g°°° cryEL UIMW Oliulra•ionrby Yl8sraer SYNOPSIS. a Harhinr Kent calls on L.ouise Parrish to II prnpo-r marriage and finds the hIousns in r1at ex'lternent over the attetmpted sui- 0 dn of her sister Katharine. Kent starts l 3 tnvcnstlgation and tinds that Ilueih Cradall. suitor for Katharine. who had 3 en fotbidden the house by g;eneral Fatr rish. had talked with Katharine o%(r the tephonae just before she shot herself. a CHAPTER I.--(Continued.) b The name meant nothing to me and tl I turned to loulse for explanation. h Though there were many callers at the t Parrish home, I never had met a Mr. If Crandall, nor had I even heard the , mame mentioned. ii "It must have been Hugh Crandall," p aid Louisae. "I was afraid that it was h be-' t Her remark puzzled me. The only b Hugh Crandall I knew anything about t was a prosperous young broker whom y I never had met personally, though I a had seen his name occasionally in con- d eetIon with exchange and club affairs. as "Do you mean Hugh Crandall, the F broker?" I asked. Iamise nodded, and leaning against ii my shoulder, told me of a chapte of t the family history with which I wy wholly unfamiliar. This man., it seemed, had met her sister two y rs I behre on a steamer on which they c we returning from Europe. After l; that he had been a frequent visitor at t the Parrish home. Latharine was very t tiad of him, and be had been in high t aer both with the general and Lou- t S'lThough no formal announcement of an engagement had been made. Crandall was looked on by every one aM iss Farrish's most favored suitor. About three months ago, just prior to thL time when I first met Louise. his vidis to the house had suddenly awed "Tm sure," Louise explained, "that eatharine cared for him very much. e and father had a bitter quarrel about him, though why, I never could moderstand, tar father had always seemed to like him. There was some thiag strange about the way his visits ,d~s. Father came home one day at aeom loIng worried. He called Kath are into the library an.] shut the d4sh. I could hear Katharine pleading with him and once or twice I heard beth their voices raised as if in anger. ,Wen my sister came out her eyes wa red as If she had been weeping Aie went at once to her room and did sot come down to dinner. When Mr. Credall called that night she came down to see him, but he stayed only ht ten minutes. He demanded an letwview with father, and father re busi'to see.bl~a He left the house in boa sa. never has been here since. Ubr several days Katharine seemed esb depressed but she volunteered Scmanldeneas and I hesitated to ask Ie any questions. She seemed after a while wholly to have recovered her aIbits and I was convinced that she hbd made up her mind to let Mr. Cran da"l go out of her life." -"That effect did this have on the re is between you' father and sis tiav" [ asked. ieeking in vain for a mo uwe that would have caused Katharine to attempt her life. "'one whatever thlat I could see. Through it all, except for that one aft terlwn, Katharine's attitude toward fa ther has been most lovable. If any thing, it seemed to me that she was sbtderer toward him afterward than before." "Do you suppose she has been meet Mg Crandall surreptitiously?" Inlsb quickly and indignantly drew herself away from me. 'You don't know Katharine as I do," bh said reprovingly, "or you never wouldl have said that. She is the soul t hbonor. If she was going to see Hugh / abe would have done so openly." "But, he telephoned her today," I per *"Ihat's so," admitted Louise. "And I think he must have done so day be. bre yesterday, too. Some one called her. an she went out just as she did kday. Generally we tell each other wh~ore we are going, and I thought it pecutlHbr at tile time that she said noth kg to me." to doep perplexity we both sat, si tay podarilng the mystery of Katha igs' actoil. What could have made S~r It? Was it, I wondered, because 1r father had learned sonmebhlng dis 'pmtilmble about her suitor and had Marbdden him the house? Had Cran 4 beens teaag to persuade uer to I aerntinue to see him despite her fa tUr'a wishes? Was the conflict in her beart between love and duty too much tur her? Louise turned to me and laid iterhand gently on my arm. "Hatl.ng" she said, "there ,a some deep myster. behind all this that has beOa cre~Plrng lilk a bSlck shadow arrsu the Iv of both Katharine and w atter. In some wsay Hugh Cran .I t concerned n it. I know It I it. It is gom-~t.,g mOre than mere a ghtutal of my K~ther to permit ' aJ+ marry Crandsl1 have watched , tli o both uad 1:lnew. I have see 'dh myaterious spar er hovertinfg ver r kh.r, jOrduail ;r*s the very soul out of him. I have seen Kath- ii arine's life, too, blighted by its con- ii stant )resence. Whether Katharine is lives or whether she dies, I must find t out what it is. I must, before it kills a my father, too. You'll help me, won't t you?" There have been strange wooings ii and strange betrothals in love's his- f tory, but never before has any man t been brought to a fuller'realization of t the depth of a woman's affection for a him or her confidence and trust in him I than I was at this moment when Lou- e ise put this question to me. My arms h went about her and my lips met hers c in one long kiss that was a pledge--a pledge that henceforth my life, my a heart, my.mind, my powers, my every- t thing were hers. All my abilities would be devoted to clearli this mystery that was stealing the joy from her i years, when they should be the pleas- d antest. But this was no time 'or love dalliance. The mystery must bet solved. Suicides generally left letters. c Perhaps- I Hand in hand, Louise and I went r into Katharine's apartments, where r the room's disorder still told of the I tragedy so recently enacted there. In one corner stood a little open desk. Its contents bore evidence of a recent t careful sorting that hinted very plain- f ly of premeditation, but there was no note or letter there. I looked next on I the mantelpiece, hoping to find among I the photographs and cotillion favors r that littered it some clue wpich might c solve the mystery, but there' was noth ing there, either. My eye fell to the grate below, where a fire burned cheerily. Here again wai evidence of premeditation I in the ashes of burned letters and the i charred corner of a photograph. A I blackened bit of paper that had fallen I through the grate before it burned caught my glance and I stooped to I pick it up. It was just a scrap of yel- I low, torn from a folded letter, with its I edges burned to fragileness. Careful ly Louise and I unfolded it. for it t seeued the only thing in all the room that might yield some explanation. As we pored over the meaningless frag ments of sentences, an exclamation of horror came from the doorway Look ing up we saw the tall form of General Farrish tottering on the sill. Clad in a dressing-jacket, his white hair in wild disorder, he pointed with accusing finger at the yellow scrap of paper in my hand. Never in mortal face have I seen such terror as I saw in his. His eyes, dilated, seemed bulg ing from their sockets. His counte nance was white as chalk. His jaw had drtoped in the paralysis of terror. From his throat came horrible mumb lings, as he tried to speak and could not. Louise and I sprang to his side, but with almost maniacal strength he shook us off and, with finger stilt pointing to the yellow scrap I had let fall to the floor, he managed to gasp: "That yellow letter. Where did-" Before he could finish the sentence he fell stricken to the floor, his voice choking, his eyes glazing, paralyzcd by some hidden terror--we -knew not what. CHAPTER II. Our FirMt'Clue. Louise and I sat at dinner together. Isn't it strangq In this world of ours how the cotlpaonplace follows on the terrible, how the usual and the un usual intermingle, how the clock ticks on when the whole universe seems to be tumbling about our heads! In one of the rooms up-stairs lay Katharine, still unconscious, with a doctor and a nurse constantly at her side. The bul let had been removed, and 'while it had penetrated the brain some slight distance, Doctor Wilcox said there was just a chance-the barest chance-that she might recover. It might, however. be hours, he explained, before she re gained eonsciousness-if she ever did In another bf the rooms lay General Farrish, more dead than alive. Paraly sis had deadened his limbs and tied t his tongue. Only his eyes seemed alert Most of the time since the stroke had felled him he had been slumbering heavily. While the bustle of caring for the two stricken ones lasted there was little time for thought, and I was glad for the activity that kept Louise's mind distracted. Just at the moment when it seemed that everything anad been cone and there was nothing left but the anxious .waiting-waiting foe r the worst-the butler had tiptoed in to Ssummon us to dinner. Brave!y, at Sfirst, Louffe and I made pretense cI c.ating, each trying to encnurage the c othcr, but the unforgetable events of 5 th' afternoon, the missing faces at the V table and the sorrow that illed us both dlrade food lmpossible. Drawing our - chairs together, we dsCisrsed in whtl. I' prers the baffling mystery of Kath ,arine's attemp:ed saukMde and her fa t ther's strange terror. d On the table before us lay the scrap B at yellow paper, the sight d wLatei . had so agitated General arrit. As y :oon as he had been carried nto his own rooms I had hastened to rescue It from the foor. I felt that, insignificant as it appeared, it must have some im portant connection with the events of the afternoon. Yet as Louise and I puzzled over it, there seemed nothing sinister in the fragments of sentences that the flames had left all but inde cipherable. The paper, of a peculiarly yellowish tint, was hardly more than two square inches, the torn corner of a folded let ter. On it we could make out these words: ba used se a sister t seemed inevita and disgrace ah by accident le make good ,As we studied the bit of type-writ ing, word by word, we tried to trace in it some hidden meaning, some sin i-ter warning, something or anything that would connect it with poor Kath arine's mental distress and her fa ther's poignant terror. That the let ter of which this was a part had been in Katharine's possession was evident. from the place where I had picked up the fragment. It was equally certain that it had been her purpose to de stroy it. On the other hand. General Farrish, too, must have known of the existence of this letter, else why did he show such terror at the mere sight of a scrap of it? It must have been part of some document that had made a viv!d impression on his mind. More than likely, we felt, whatever the let ter was, it had played some part in the quarrel between Katharine and her father the afternoon before she dismissed Hugh Crandall. We ran over all the words we could think of that begin "b-a," trying to fit one to the phrases following-back, bar, ban, bank, bankruptcy, basin, bar rel, barren, battle-there were too many of them. We gave it up and. passed on to the next phrase, "used se-" It proved equally puzzling. We could make nothing out of it, but the third line at least was definite enough for discussion. "A sister-" said Louise. "That makes it certain that this letter did not apply in any way to father, for he never had a sister. He was an o-nly child." I was not so positive as she that the letter did not apply to the general. The thought came to me that perhaps even in the proud Farrish family there might have been some girl child of unblessed birth whose existence bad been kept secret from Louise. Per haps some knowledge of this sort had come to Katharine and the letter re ferred to it. I refrained from suggest ing such a theory,' for I felt it would be the height of cruelty even to hint such a thing to Louise at a time when the father was helpless to explain. Yet the following phrase, "seemed in evitable," might well fit into some cys r I tOn the Table Before Us Lay tbh Scrap of Yellow Paw. theory such as this, followed as it was in the next line with the word "dis grace." For a moment I felt that I was on the track of the solution of the mys tery. Some specter from the general's past had risen to haunt his declining ycars, to threaten his good name, to worry him into his grave. His elder daughter had discovered it and had been unable to carry the Brden of shame. Could this have bee the secret that Chese two shared and kept Louse in swaorm e off A word freo Louise aft -tone aupset my theory. "I woed,"-, sh sad. "1t m, lisu't part of a letter about Hugh CraI dJ I Both she sad I were eoatlaed that in some way Crandal was SaII My theory would not sooowat Bfr his connection with the case and I at oee abandoned it, listening intently to oa Louise advanced. "There must have been some con nection between his having telephoned her and what she did this afternqoa. Before she shot herself she burned this letter, or most of it. Father must have known about the letter, so I am certain that It concerned CrandalL" "Has Crandall a sister?" "I 'do not know," said Louise. "I know nothing about his family. It seems strange, too, when for months and months we saw so much of him. I do not recollect his ever having men' loned any of his relatives." My brain recorded a victory for woman's intuition over man's logic. Her theory seemed infinitely better than mine. After all ih was absurd to suspect a skeleton in the life of a man like Gen'ral Farrish, who had been constantly under public scrutiny for many years. It was much more prob able that the letter referred to some incident in the life of Crandall. some thing so discreditable that the general had been forced to forbid Katharine having anything to do with him. This theory would account for the quarrel between father and daughter, for Cran dali's reticence about his family, for Katharine's distress, and naturally the sight of the letter that had caused all the trouble would upset the gen. eral. I began to see a plan for action. "Louise, dear-" How quickly a&d versity strips off conventionality and puts us where our hearts wotld have us! "Louise, dear." I said, 'It will probably be days before either loas father or Katherine will be able to give us any assistance, yet the knowl. edge that everything has been cleared up, that the specter has been driven away. undoubtedly would hasten the recovery of both go I feel that we must go ahe4ad." "Oh, HardingL" she breathed Her hand stole out and sought mine. "What a comfort you are to me! What would I have done this afternoon withcut you! You're right, dear, we must sols this awful mystery at once. We must." "The Arst thing for me to do," I went on, "is to And Hugh Crandall. He can probably tell us all ab6ut this letter. Even if he can't he can say why he telephoned Katharine and where she went this afternoon. When we have learned this much we shall at least have made a good start. The next thing will be to trace the letter. If Crandall does not know about it, we will try to learn from whom it camae." "That's impossible," objected Lo. Ise. "Haven't we looked everywhere in Katharine's room for the envelope in which it came. I am positive that she burned it. Without the envelope you can never discover where it was mailed or to whom it was addressed." "I'm not so sure about that. TM post office has wonderful ways te tracing mail. One of tls tIpeators It a friend of mine and we will enlist bi help. But first 1 must nd CraadarS Probably he can toll as everythi2 g t he will. Do you know'where he Ifves-' "He has bachelor apartments some where along the avenue, I don't knot just where. I know his place of best ness." "I know ,thst. toe, but It Is useless ta try b faid ti tmamM tasigbt" "eatharlne used to mld tll be notes to one of his duLb wheo s bhe ' verslty"C -0.I..lt use" ish? 3entea blon NO SLEEPImUAA6 FOR mTHE Lapianders Preferred the anew end the Open Air, and So Had a Comfortable Night. Sir Henry Lucy tells in the Corn hill Magazine a good story that he hb from Nansen, the explorer. It amusingly illustrates the hardy health of the Laplanders. Part of Nansen's equipment for his trip across Greenland consisted of two sleeping-bags made of undressed skins. On the first night of the Jour ney Nansen and his two Norwegian companions got into one of the bogs. pulled the mouth tight across their necks, and so slept in the snow with only their heads out. Before retiring to rest. Nansen saw the three Iaplanders he had engaged for the expedition cosily tucked into the other sleeping-bag. When he awoke in the morning, almost numb with cold, ho observed that the bag in which he had tied up the fapland ers was empty, and that they were no where In sight. He was afraid they bad deserted him, and scrambling out of the bag he went in search of them. He found the three men f*st asleep behind a hillock of snow that they had scraped together as a pro tection against the wind. "Ah,. master," they said. when ask ed to explain tMrs extraordinary coan duct, "we couldn't sleep in that thing. It was too hot. so we got out and' have had a comfortable night here." RCT NPW'. Daisy--By' the way, Prank;. that's a lovely walstOoat you, have. New, iSu't it? Frank-No. Dalsy-Strange; I never saw it be. tore. Frank-That's because my brother never called at you. Changed Its Spesie. "Waen't the forbidden fruit an ap pier" "Yes, but at the time Eve handed it to Adam it was a lemon." 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