He stood with bowed head, while Gilead accepted and examined the slip presented to him. It was merely a printed paragraph, a cutting of a newspaper report, and it ran as follows. Gilead read it out in a low voice, that Miss Halifax might hear:-- “_Late on Wednesday night the B... Free Library was broken into, and an attempt made to steal a number of Japanese colour prints from the walls of the reading-room. The thief procured an entrance through a window easy of access from an unoccupied yard at the back of the premises, and was in the act of removing the prints from their frames for the purpose of making an inconspicuous parcel of them, when he was alarmed, it is conjectured, by the movements of the caretaker above, and decamped, leaving his spoil behind him. The prominence lately given, through the Happer and other sales, to the commercial value of these works of art, was no doubt accountable for the attempt, which should prove instructive to the librarian. The police have a clue, it is said, in some finger-marks, and in one thumb mark in particular, left by the burglar upon the wet plaster of a wall in the window embrasure, which that very day had undergone some repairs._” Gilead looked up with a reassuring smile. “Let him that is without sin among us cast the first stone,” he said. The young fellow gave an irrepressible gasp. “God bless you!” he said; “God bless you, sir, for that! But there is worse to follow--something infinitely more horrible and distressing.” His listener’s brow darkened a little. “Some later crime?” he asked softly. “I will not--I must not say another word,” answered the visitor in agony, “until you have gone through this also. It is dated only three days later.” Half dreading what was to come, Gilead accepted a second newspaper cutting from his hand, and, bending with compressed lips, read it out as he had the former:-- “_It is our painful duty to record the death--whether by his own hand or that of another it remains to prove--of the well-known artist and sculptor Mr Auguste Lerroux. Mr Lerroux occupied a maisonette and studio in Edwards Square off the Kensington Road, and, upon entering the latter apartment at seven o’clock yesterday morning to light the fire, the maid servant discovered to her horror her master lying dead upon the floor with a bullet wound through his head. The weapon, an air-pistol, with which the injury had been inflicted lay beside the body, and the shot from it had apparently penetrated the brain through the right eye. No adequate cause can be assigned for the unfortunate gentleman’s suicide, and at present the affair remains a mystery. The police, who were summoned at once, are very reticent in the matter; but it is hinted that they are in possession of a certain clue which in some mysterious way associates the crime, if crime it be, with an attempted theft of Japanese prints from the B ... Free Library, as reported in our columns some days ago._”