“Mrs. Belden,” said he, “you know Mr. Clavering’s handwriting when _you_ see it?” “I do.” “And Miss Leavenworth’s?” “Yes, sir.” “Now, which of the two was upon the envelope of the letter you gave Hannah?” “I couldn’t say. It was a disguised handwriting and might have been that of either; but I think----” “Well?” “That it was more like hers than his, though it wasn’t like hers either.” With a smile, Mr. Gryce enclosed the confession in his hand in the envelope in which it had been found. “You remember how large the letter was which you gave her?” “Oh, it was large, very large; one of the largest sort.” “And thick?” “O yes; thick enough for two letters.” “Large enough and thick enough to contain this?” laying the confession, folded and enveloped as it was, before her. “Yes, sir,” giving it a look of startled amazement, “large enough and thick enough to contain that.” Mr. Gryce’s eyes, bright as diamonds, flashed around the room, and finally settled upon a fly traversing my coat-sleeve. “Do you need to ask now,” he whispered, in a low voice, “where, and from whom, this so-called confession comes?” He allowed himself one moment of silent triumph, then rising, began folding the papers on the table and putting them in his pocket. “What are you going to do?” I asked, hurriedly approaching. He took me by the arm and led me across the hall into the sitting-room. “I am going back to New York, I am going to pursue this matter. I am going to find out from whom came the poison which killed this girl, and by whose hand this vile forgery of a confession was written.” “But,” said I, rather thrown off my balance by all this, “Q and the coroner will be here presently, won’t you wait to see them?” “No; clues such as are given here must be followed while the trail is hot; I can’t afford to wait.” “If I am not mistaken, they have already come,” I remarked, as a tramping of feet without announced that some one stood at the door. “That is so,” he assented, hastening to let them in. Judging from common experience, we had every reason to fear that an immediate stop would be put to all proceedings on our part, as soon as the coroner was introduced upon the scene. But happily for us and the interest at stake, Dr. Fink, of R ----, proved to be a very sensible man. He had only to hear a true story of the affair to recognize at once its importance and the necessity of the most cautious action in the matter. Further, by a sort of sympathy with Mr. Gryce, all the more remarkable that he had never seen him before, he expressed himself as willing to enter into our plans, offering not only to allow us the temporary use of such papers as we desired, but even undertaking to conduct the necessary formalities of calling a jury and instituting an inquest in such a way as to give us time for the investigations we proposed to make.