The manager came forward and assisted her from the platform, amid a buzz of excitement in the audience, returning in a few moments to announce that Madame Lucien had been affected by the heat of the room and would be unable to continue the reading, but he would introduce in her place the trance medium Mr. Eugene Potts, who was both clairvoyant and audient. While this scene was transpiring in Boxwell Hall, Major Walden was hurrying down the street as though driven by a legion of furies. He felt that he must get away or do that for which he might be sorry. On, on he walked, heeding not his direction or whereabouts. He was fleeing from her and from this nightmare of horror which beset him. And the vision before his eyes of the pale, spirituelle face of his lost one kept pace with him. He could not escape it. An hour later he had turned his steps homeward. He had walked away the uncontrollable emotion which had possessed him at the sight of Agnes, and a calmer spirit prevailed. He had decided that it was better that he should not meet her again. He would go to his office and write her fully, and send her again the letter which he had sent to her Eastern home and which had been returned to him through the dead letter office but a few days before this. She should know how completely he had been punished for his lack of trust in her, and should forgive him, if her sweet, forgiving nature could do so. The people were returning from the hall. He stepped into the shadow of a doorway and waited for the crowd to pass by and the street to become once more deserted. He realized he scanned each face and figure closely. Was he hoping to see her? No, it were better that he did not; he had settled that question, but now, in the struggle with himself. The street lamps flamed and flickered, casting weird shadows on the darkened buildings of the business street where he stood. Ahead of him, as he again started forward, he saw a solitary individual stop under a light and take a letter from his pocket, which, leaning against the lamp-post, he began to read. Something in his figure and attitude arrested Major Walden’s attention. He looked at him searchingly as he approached him. At the moment the man, hearing his footsteps, turned his face from the letter toward him. A flame of angry fire shot from the Major’s brain to each prescient nerve and muscle of his being. With a spring he was upon the man, his hand upon his throat. “Ah, ha! You miserable, white-livered abomination! It is well I have found you now,—now, when your victim is here in this city,—you fiend-ambassador of Satan! Killing is too good for you!” The attack was so sudden the victim had no chance to cry out, and sank to the ground, with no show of resistance, the Major’s hand in a death-grip upon his throat, shutting off breath from his lungs. “Take that—and that—and that!” cried Walden, raining the blows with his clenched fist upon the other’s face and shoulders. “I shall kill you! do you hear?”