"We shall have much to talk about to-night, and I fancy we are all a good deal shaken. It's not often we receive a letter from a dead man, so we shall admit no callers to-night unless, indeed, Mr. Wiggins should chance to come," announced Miss Octavia. "The next time Hartley Wiggins visits this house he shall come as a conquering hero." "I hope so," replied Cecilia brokenly. We were still at dinner when the cards of Dick and the other suitors I had last seen at the Prescott Arms were brought in; but Wiggins made no sign, and I wondered. XX HEZEKIAH PARTITIONS THE KINGDOM The man who looked after my needs handed me a note the next morning which added fresh hazards to Cecilia's already perilous plight. "Left with the gardener before six o'clock by a boy from the village. Said it was most confidential, sir." I waited till he had left the room before opening it. A square white envelope addressed to Arnold Ames, Esq., Hopefield Manor, told me nothing, and the handwriting was inscrutable. It slanted slightly upward; the small letters were half-printed and quaintly shaded. If a woman's, she had scorned the rail-fence models of the boarding-schools; if a man's--but I knew its gender well enough! The white note sheet within was unadorned, and the same pen had traced compactly, within the widest possible margins, the following:-- GOOSEBERRY BUNGALOW, Before Breakfast. DEAR CHIMNEYS:--Pep stopped here yesterday to see B.H. He and C. old pals. Watch him. Where's Wig? H.H. The initials were superfluous, and yet the sight of them pleased me mightily. In her semi-printing she curved the pillars of the H's like parentheses, so that they bore an amusing resemblance to four men striding forward against a storm. The report of a chief of scouts smuggled through the enemy's lines could not have improved on her billet for succinctness, and the information conveyed was startling enough. We had been dealing with a company of suitors outside the barricade; now came warning of the presence of a strange knight within the gates who greatly multiplied the perils of the situation. The compact between the suitors at the inn was a thing of the past, and I now expected them to exercise all the ingenuity of which desperate lovers are capable in pressing their claims. The fact that both Wiggins and Pepperton were old friends of mine did not make my task easier. I not only felt it incumbent on me to prevent Dick, the holder of the clue, from taking advantage of it, but knowing Cecilia's own attitude of mind and heart toward Wiggins I wished to save Pepperton the pain of rejection if it could be done.