“Of course not,” said Mrs. Knapp. “But you might have guessed that I got my summons after you left, this evening. I should have spoken to you then if I had known. I was near coming to an explanation, as it was.” “There are a good many things I haven't guessed,” I confessed. “But,” she continued, returning to the map, “this gives a different place. I was to go to the cross-road here,”--indicating the mark at the last branch. “I'm glad to hear that,” said I, taking out the diagram I had found in the citadel of the enemy. “This seems to point to a different place, too, and I really hope that the gentleman who drew this map is a good way off from the truth.” “Where did you get this?” exclaimed Mrs. Knapp. I described the circumstances in as few words as I could command. “They are ahead of us,” she said in alarm. “They have started first, I suppose,” was my suggestion. “And they have the right road.” “Then our only hope is that they may not know the right place.” “God grant it,” said Mrs. Knapp. She was silent for a few minutes, and I saw that her eyes were filled with tears. I was moved by her signs of feeling. I thought they were for the boy and was about to ask what would happen to him in case he was found by the enemy, when she said: “Now tell me about Henry Wilton--how he died and when.” Again the vision of my first dreadful night in San Francisco rose before me, the cries for help from my murdered friend rang in my ears, and the scene in the alley and the figure in the morgue burned before my eyes. I told the tale as it had happened, and as I told it I read in the face before me the varying emotions of alarm, horror and grief that were stirred by its incidents. But one thing I could not tell her. The wolf-face I had seen in the lantern flash in the alley I could not name nor describe to the wife of Doddridge Knapp. Yet at the thought the dark mystery grew darker, yet, and I began to doubt what my eyes had seen, and my ears had heard. Mrs. Knapp bowed her head in deep, gloomy thought. “I feared it, yet he would not listen to my warnings,” she murmured. “He would work his own way.” Then she looked me suddenly straight in the face. “And why did you take his place, his name? Why did you try to do his work when you had seen the dreadful end to which it had brought him?” I confessed that it was half through the insistence of Detective Coogan that I was Henry Wilton, half through the course of events that seemed to make it the easiest road to reach the vengeance that I had vowed to bring the murderer of my friend. “You are bent on avenging him?” asked Mrs. Knapp thoughtfully. “I have promised it.” “You shall have the chance. Strange thought!” she said gloomily, “that the dead hand of Henry Wilton may reach out from beyond the grave and strike at his slayer when he least expects it.”