“No; nothing can explain that! Oh, nothing explains anything! Zizi, you’ve no idea what I suffer! I wonder I keep my mind! Just think of a woman who never had to decide a question for herself, if she didn’t want to,—who never had a care or responsibility that she didn’t assume of her own accord,—who had a husband to care for her, a daughter to love her——” The poor woman broke down completely, and Zizi had her hands full to ward off the violent hysterics that attacked her at times. Meantime, Pennington Wise, convinced of the origin of the green smear on Zizi’s frock, was starting forth to prove his conviction. Armed only with a powerful flashlight and a good-sized hammer, he went out to the kitchen and through that to the cellar. There, he went straight to the old well, and testing the rope as he did so, he let the bucket down as far as it would go. Then, with monkey-like agility he began to clamber down,—partly supported by clinging to the rope, partly by getting firm footholds on the old stones that lined the well. Scarcely had he started, when he experimentally drew his hand across the stones, and by his flashlight perceived a green smear, the counterpart of that on Zizi’s frock. Also, the counterpart of that on Martha’s hand. Yet, the dead girl could scarcely have been in the well! So,—her assailant must have been. However, he went on investigating. He noted carefully the walls as he descended, and it was not until he almost reached the bottom of the dried-up old well, that he noticed anything strange. All of the wall was very rough and uneven but here was what appeared to be a distinct hole, roughly filled in with loose stones. Standing now on the bottom of the well, slippery with moisture but no water above his shoe soles, he used his hammer to dislodge these stones, working carefully and slowly, but with a certainty of success. “Fool that I was,” he chattered to himself, “not to come down here the very first thing! To trust to Zizi was all right,—the kid couldn’t notice this place,—but I had no business to trust that half-baked sheriff or his man!” His work soon disclosed the fact that the loose stones apparently closed the mouth of a deep hole. When all that were loose had been either pulled out or pushed in, he found there was an aperture large enough to permit a man’s body to pass through, and without hesitation, he scrambled through it. His flashlight showed him that almost from the start the hole widened until it became a fair-sized tunnel. Crawling along this for a hundred yards or so, he heard the splash of water, and soon he no longer needed his flashlight, as daylight streamed in through a narrow fissure in the rock. It was fortunate for Wise that it did, for just ahead the tunnel descended sharply, and at the bottom, what was evidently the surf was surging in from the ocean.