"MY DEAR HUSBAND: Each day is more lonesome since your departure. I shall go mad if things do not turn out as you have planned. Get well quick. Make those nasty doctors take a special interest in your case. Offer them the highest inducement, and if you can't fulfil any agreement you make with them, let me know and I will help you, if I have to sell the gown off my back. That hateful Mr. Carter is here yet, but from what he told father the other day, I think he will leave for New York in a day or two. We've pulled the wool over his eyes so thoroughly that he is as harmless as a dove. Chick, poor man, is about well. He is a good fellow, and I don't think he bears any grudge against me. But Patsy--you remember Patsy, don't you? He's the boy I told you about--he takes no stock in me. He told me so the other day. He had the impudence to say this to my face. 'Young woman,' said he, 'I wouldn't trust you farther than I can sling a cat.' I laughed at him. I could afford to. Now, do as I tell you. Get well and--you know what our plan is. "Lovingly your own NELLIE." The second and third letters showed the writer's anxiety over her husband's condition, which had become serious. In the last letter she said, if he was not better at the end of a week, she would take him to Philadelphia and place him under the care of a noted specialist. Nick returned the letters to the superintendent, and then asked for the bank-notes. As he had expected, they belonged to the batch stolen from the body of Cora Reesey. "With what was Mannion afflicted when he came to the hospital?" was his next question. "A complication of diseases, brought on by exposure. He looked like a tramp when he arrived, and said that for many days he had been sleeping in barns, sheds, and on the ground. Typhoid set in a week ago." "Can you give me a description of his person, not omitting any physical peculiarity?" "Yes. He was tall, thin, dark-featured, black-haired--he wore no mustache, had shaved it off, he said--and half of the forefinger of his left hand was missing." Nick's brow clouded for a moment. Then from the innermost corner of his brain crept an idea. "Doctor," said he, "have you given me a complete description of the dead man? Was there not some artificial mark on his left arm?" "Yes; I had forgotten," replied the superintendent apologetically. "There was a castle tattooed on his arm." "I thought so. One more question, and I am done. Did Mannion have any visitors, friends, while he was in the hospital?" "One, his uncle, who came a few days before the typhoid symptoms appeared. Mannion said the uncle was the only blood relative he had." "Did they hold long conversations?" "On the first visit they had a long talk. After that they had not much to say to each other." "Was the uncle an old man?"