Witherspoon smiled sadly, as his friend's excitement betrayed the innocent secret of the young physician's heart. "No! God be praised!" he slowly answered. "Alice lives to bless some good man's life! But I have here a message from the dead, and the last legacy of a crime! You must go out instantly to Detroit, for I cannot leave our great interests at this juncture. It seems as if the very grave had opened for this!" Doctor Atwater's eyes were dim when he handed the papers back to his friend. "What could have goaded him on to his unhappy end! What stings and whiplashes of conscience! Let us go carefully over the whole matter together! I will telegraph my departure and then take to-night's train." The few lines traced by Arthur Ferris' feeble fingers were supplemented by a long and formal letter from the United States Vice-Consul at Amoy. The enclosure of a verified copy of the will of Arthur Ferris, duly attested by the consular seal, was accompanied by a statement that the original and the keys of Ferris' safe deposit box in New York had been duly forwarded to New York, through the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. There was a sealed enclosure directed to Miss Alice Worthington, the superscription being faintly discernable in the trembling hand of the fever patient. And as both men gazed silently at each other, they knew that some dark secret lay veiled there under the outspread wings of the American eagle of the consular seal, which duplicated Ferris' private signet. With a strange interest, Atwater read of the last sufferings of the unfortunate official. "My late superior seemed to be tortured in his mind to his very last moment," wrote the Vice-Consul, "by the fear that these documents might not safely reach Miss Worthington through you. "Be pleased to give me the earliest possible acknowledgment of the receipt of both the certified copy herewith sent and the original with the keys and duly certified order for the delivery of the tin box of the deceased to Miss Worthington herself." "Here we dismiss his memory forever between us!" solemnly said Witherspoon, as he read aloud Arthur Ferris' last message. "It is for her alone to bear him in mind, and to sit in judgment upon him! What unrighted wrong drove him, in remorse, to his lonely grave! I shall never ask an answer of her!" In vain did Atwater follow the enigmatic sentences. "I leave the fund of one hundred thousand dollars, created for me by my uncle, and the similar sum now due and payable by the Worthington Estate, to Alice Worthington for the foundation of such a charity as she may deem proper. This money is the legacy of a crime and of a wrong! "Of a crime, though only contemplated, of which I am not innocent at heart, and of a wrong done, of which Miss Worthington alone shall be the judge.