It was strange the way the pencil wrote of itself. "A page of notes in her husband's shorthand has been found under one of the pillars of the writing-table," it wrote, and it omitted, as if it had been endowed with Louie's own intelligence, Sir Julius's interpolated remark, "I've got that page of notes, by the way." Mr. Whitlock had described to Louie one day a contrivance called a tele-writer; a pen dipped itself into a bottle of ink and wrote, unassisted, a telegraphed message; they were new, and they hadn't got them at the Consolidation yet; but they were putting them into some of the post offices, Mr. Whitlock had said. Her pencil moved like the pen of a tele-writer. She watched it, fascinated. It was writing as Sir Julius talked, about Jim now. "--lived an intense crowded life too. I should say at a guess there weren't many things he hadn't done at one time and another, short of a murder or a matrimonial infidelity. Don't think he could have been tempted to do that. One woman could do anything she liked with him, but the others wouldn't have much chance----" Very little chance, Louie thought. That, in a sense, had been the tragedy of it all. Louie knew more about that than Sir Julius; Louie had once said, "Come, come!" to him, in tones that might have brought angels from above and devils from below running for love, but it had not made a ha'p'orth of difference to Jim. Sir Julius seemed to be praising him for it; Louie was not sure that she could exactly do that; she could almost as soon have mocked him for it; but you neither mock nor praise a blind man merely because he is blind. It was funny that Sir Julius, with not very much to boast about himself, should set up an idol of faithfulness; and not just for somebody else to worship either; that was the funny part; men did that kind of thing; sinned, and yet worshipped, and called it "the maintenance of an ideal." They honoured Joseph, and winked when his back was turned. Perhaps they made much of him because of his rarity. Well, it was all the same to Potiphar's wife.... But all at once something seemed to have happened to the pencil. It was tele-writing very furiously. Sir Julius was reading from another piece of paper; Louie fancied, somehow, that it might be the piece that had got wafted under the pillar of Jim's desk. "_--show him that red thing on the floor and that curved thing on the door._" _But now Archie in his turn seemed to have become divided. He had turned suddenly white. But an habitual pertness still persisted in his tongue. I don't think this had any relation whatever to the physical peril he seemed at last to have realised he was in. I stood over him huge and black as Fate.... "Spare him if you can," that generous bloodthirsty devil in me muttered quickly...._ "_Merridew," I said heavily, "you'll disappear to-morrow morning--or----_" "_Shall I?" he bragged falteringly...._