It is a long and well nigh incredible story to which I have been listening this evening. But it explains everything and clears up everything, and the shadow that has hung over "Hildebrand Hundred" for so long has finally fled away; never, thank God! to return. * * * * * _Imprimis_, let me register full and frank confession of my unutterable folly in ever doubting Betty; or, for that matter, my dear friend Chalmers Warriner. And the explanation was so absurdly simple--the secret engagement between Warriner and Hilda Powers. Of course, Betty had been Hilda's confidante and could not betray her even to re-establish a foolish husband's peace of mind. The ridiculous side of the affair lay in the fact that there had been no particular reason for keeping the engagement under cover, outside of Hilda's whim to have the announcement delayed until after the marriage of her elder sister Eva. Anyhow it _had_ been a secret and Betty had kept it loyally, even to her own hurt. Moreover, she may have detected other traces of the green-eyed monster in my make-up, and had decided that I needed a salutary lesson. Let it go at that. Of course, the mere statement of fact was enough to untangle the whole coil; explained at once was the confidential understanding which certainly had existed between my wife and my friend; also Warriner's appearance at Stockbridge (where Hilda was already Betty's guest), and all the other straws that seemed to show which way the wind blew, and yet were nothing but straws, hopelessly light-minded and wholly irresponsible. I made my amends humbly enough, and they were generously accepted; we will say no more about it. Dinner was over, and we were taking our coffee on the front portico. It was a perfect June night, the heavens a sable pall studded with innumerable star-clusters, the little vagrant breezes redolent of new mown hay, a nightingale singing in a nearby boscage. An atmosphere of heavenly peace and quiet that I must needs disturb with the blunt question: "And now what was it that killed John Thaneford?" Chalmers Warriner threw away the butt of his cigar. "What was it that killed all the Hildebrands throughout two generations?" he retorted. "Yardley and Randall and Horace and Richard, and Francis Graeme? The answer to the one question is the answer to them all. And, finally, there was Eunice Trevor, who went voluntarily to meet the invisible angel of death--a brave woman if there ever was one! Of course you remember the unfinished letter which she left behind her. There was a particular paragraph in it that impressed me, and I copied it down in my note-book." He pulled out the little volume and began to read: