received your last awful, threatening letter. I have had to resort to drugs--something I should not have taken, and my brain is on fire. I feel as if death itself would be sweet. Hartley, oh, Hartley; abuse me, villify me, kill me if you will, but do not denounce me! For my life I am pleading--oh, listen, listen, for--must I say it?--for your own safety hear me. I cannot stand everything. Do not drive me to madness and death--or worse! Have pity on her whom you once called--your Julie.” As I read this heart rending missive my late patient’s case did not seem so mysterious. I do not hesitate to say, moreover, that the memory of his last horrible agonies was pleasanter to contemplate than it had been. “The man who inspired that letter,” I exclaimed aloud, “never committed suicide. He was not man enough. That fellow died like a poisoned rat in a hole,--if the evidence counts for anything.” Having thus become more reconciled to the death of the late Mr. Peyton, I was less inclined than ever to be in haste in promoting any legal intermeddling with what had begun to appear a just dispensation of Providence. But I was nevertheless determined to see the matter to its conclusion. I was bound to find the hand that had “poisoned the rat.” I could decide what course to pursue afterward. I was confident that I knew for whom I must look, but where? Where was “Julie?” After a hurried breakfast I began my quest. As luck would have it I decided to visit the Emporium first. I confess that when I entered the colossal establishment and saw its large number of female employes I began to fear that, with only the given name of the person I was seeking and a mental reproduction of her photograph to guide me, my task was liable to be something like the proverbial search for the needle in the haystack. For more than two hours I strolled about the Emporium, covertly studying the faces of the women clerks and affecting an indifference which I did not feel, without seeing any one who could by any possibility have been taken for the original of the picture. Black hair and dark eyes--the possessors of which were not seldom beautiful--were there in plenty, but none that could be compared with those I sought. I was about to go to the office of the establishment to inquire there, under the pretext of seeking a witness of an accident case, when I caught sight of one of the floor walkers, a Mr. Courtney, who chanced to be an old patient of mine. “Ah,” I thought, “here is some one who may help me.” Mr. Courtney greeted me warmly, and replied courteously, when I asked for a private interview, “Certainly, doctor, step this way.” Having seated ourselves on a sofa in an out of the way corner of the store, I said,