That end makes a well-known chapter in criminal history. The inquest was adjourned, the river dragged, and the body of the unfortunate girl actually found as suggested. She had been shot in the breast, lashed firmly to a heavy iron bar, and dropped overboard. What provocation underlay the desperate horrible deed, whether it had been premeditated or committed in a moment of uncontrollable frenzy, will never be known. Nor was it known for long, to any but himself and one other, what had inspired Gilead to that tragic statement. The explanation shall be given in his own words, as uttered, in awe and solemnity, to a young lady:-- “I had been trying to argue it out in my own mind; I had fallen into a state of odd moral confusion, when, looking up, I saw her. She stood beside the Coroner facing me, as she had stood that night in the office, and, as her lips moved without sound, I simply took from them and repeated the purport of their message. The moment I had uttered it she was gone. “I spoke and walked for long afterwards as in a shattering, a tremendous dream. I hope and pray that such an experience can come to a man only once in his lifetime. Her spirit, have you realized, must have sprung to us--to you--for help, on the instant that his intention betrayed itself?” “And afterwards?” whispered Vera. “That nature of hers, so persistent, so vindictive! O, wicked as he was, my whole soul shudders for him!” CHAPTER XI. THE QUEST OF THE VEILED WOMAN _To the benevolent and pitiful. Fifty pounds will save a wretched wife and mother from ruin and disgrace. Help implored: by letter or personal interview. Address, Suppliant_, 050271, _Daily Post._ No one instituting a philanthropic mission could have been less adequately equipped for it in one way than Gilead himself. Beginning by presuming in all others an integrity as pure as his own, he had from the first to put force upon his nature to cultivate that suspicion of motive, that moral self-guardedness, which are the first essentials of practical benevolence. He had, in short, in recognizing the eternal human duplicities, to learn to distinguish finely between cant and sincerity; and he was not always successful. Practice and experience did much for him; yet there were occasions still when guile found the opportunity to encounter him triumphantly on his emotional side. Such was the case in the affair which we have entitled as above--a quest which he could never recall without humiliation, and the memory of which made him feel sore for years afterwards. But it is true that he was hit, in its connection, on quite another than the humanitarian side; and it was that wound, no doubt, which most rankled.