I didn’t get back to my moorings, come down from the clouds to the solid ground, till the scene by the table was over. Mrs. Whitehall was sitting up, a little color in her cheeks, mistress of herself again. They’d evidently said something to lull her fears about Carol for the distraction of her mood was gone. It wasn’t till I saw the narrowed interest of George’s eyes, the hungry expectation of O’Mally’s watching face, that I remembered they were still on the scent of a murder in which Barker’s daughter was as much involved as Barker’s fiancée. _That_ brought _me_ back to the moment and its meaning like an electric shock. I made a stride forward, to get closer, to hear them, for they were at the table again, waiting on the words of Mrs. Whitehall. The first sentence that struck my ear aptly matched her pitiful appearance: "Gentlemen, I’m broken. I’ve been through too much." The chief answered very gently: "Having said what you have, would it not be wisdom to tell us everything? We pledge ourselves to secrecy." She nodded, a gesture of weary acquiescence. "Oh, yes. I don’t mind telling—it _was_ to be told; but," she dropped her eyes to her hands clasped in her lap. In that position her likeness to Carol, as she had sat there a few weeks before, was singularly striking. "I’ll have to go back a good many years, before my child was born, before the world had heard of Johnston Barker." "Wherever you want, Mrs. Whitehall," the chief murmured. "We’re entirely at your service." She drew a deep breath and without raising her eyes said: "I was married to Johnston Barker twenty-eight years ago in Idaho. He was a miner then and I was a school teacher, nineteen years old, an orphan with no near relations. I was not strong and had gone to the Far West for my health. Under the unaccustomed work I broke down, developing a weakness of the lungs, and casual friends, the parents of a pupil, took me with them to a distant mining camp for the drier air. There I met Johnston and we became engaged. "In those days in such remote places there were no churches or clergymen and contract marriages were recognized. I did not believe in them, would not at first consent to such a ceremony, but a great strike taking place in a distant camp, he prevailed upon me to marry him by contract, the friends with whom I was living acting as witnesses. "The place to which he took me was wild and inaccessible, connecting by trails with other camps and by a long stage journey with a distant railway station. We lived there for a month—happy as I have never been since. Then a woman, a snake in the garden, finding out how I had married hinted to me that such contracts were illegal. I don’t know why she did it—I’ve often wondered—but there _are_ people in the world who take a pleasure in spoiling the joy of others.