"--Your loving father, "Henry Clinton." I read this strange letter over carefully twice, and laid it down. For a moment I hardly knew what to say. It was certainly the most uncanny thing I had ever come across. "What do you think of it?" asked Allen at last. "Well, of course there are only two possible solutions," I answered. "One is that your father not only dreamt the beginning of this story--which, remember, he allows himself--but the whole of it." "And the other?" asked Allen, seeing that I paused. "The other," I continued, "I hardly know what to say yet. Of course we will investigate the whole thing, that is our only chance of arriving at a solution. It is absurd to let matters rest as they are. We had better try to-night." Clinton winced and hesitated. "Something must be done, of course," he answered; "but the worst of it is Phyllis and her mother are coming here early to-morrow in time for the funeral, and I cannot meet her--no, I cannot, poor girl!--while I feel as I do." "We will go to the vault to-night," I said. Clinton rose from his chair and looked at me. "I don't like this thing at all, Bell," he continued. "I am not by nature in any sense of the word a superstitious man, but I tell you frankly nothing would induce me to go alone into that chapel to-night; if you come with me, that, of course, alters matters. I know the pew my father refers to well; it is beneath the window of St. Sebastian." Soon afterwards I went to my room and dressed; and Allen and I dined _tete-a-tete_ in the great dining-room. The old butler waited on us with funereal solemnity, and I did all I could to lure Clinton's thoughts into a more cheerful and healthier channel. I cannot say that I was very successful. I further noticed that he scarcely ate anything, and seemed altogether to be in a state of nervous tension painful to witness. After dinner we went into the smoking-room, and at eleven o'clock I proposed that we should make a start. Clinton braced himself together and we went out. He got the chapel keys, and then going to the stables we borrowed a lantern, and a moment afterwards found ourselves in the sacred edifice. The moon was at her full, and by the pale light which was diffused through the south windows the architecture of the interior could be faintly seen. The Gothic arches that flanked the centre aisle with their quaint pillars, each with a carved figure of one of the saints, were quite visible, and further in the darkness of the chancel the dim outlines of the choir and altar-table with its white marble reredos could be just discerned.