He played over the opening bars again, and once more she drew the deep breath that in the past had always brought with it so much of exultation and began to sing. The same feeble sounds, obscured as though passing through a thick, muffling medium, hoarse, flat, unlovely, came with labor from her parted lips. They broke suddenly into a wild animal cry of despair. Pierpont rose from the stool and went toward her where she stood with her arms drooping by her sides, pallid and terrible. “Don’t look like that,” he said, taking her hand; “there’s no doubt the voice has been injured. But rest does a great deal, and after a shock like last night--” She tore herself away from him and ran to the door crying: “Oh, my voice! My voice! It was all I had!” He followed her into the hall, not knowing what to say in the face of such a calamity, only anxious to offer her some consolation. But she ran from him, up the stairs with a frantic speed. As he put his foot on the lower step he heard her door. He turned round and went back slowly to his room. He was shocked and amazed, and a little relieved that he had failed to catch her for he had no words ready for such a misfortune. Her voice was completely gone. She was unquestionably ill and nervous--but-- He sat down on the divan, shaking his head. He had never heard a voice more utterly lost and wrecked. * * * * * Barron’s business engagement detained him longer than he had expected. The heavy rain was shortening the already short February day with a premature dusk when he opened the gate of the Garcia house and mounted the steps. He had made a cursory investigation of the ground under the pepper-tree when he went out in the early morning. Now, before the light died, he again stepped under its branches for a more thorough survey. The foliage was so thick that no grass grew where the tree’s shadow fell, and the rain sifted through it in occasional dribbles or shaken showers. The bare stretch of ground was now an expanse of mud, interspersed with puddles. Here and there a footprint still remained, full of water. He moved about the base of the tree studying these, then looking up into the branch along which the burglar had crept to the balcony. What paper could the girl have possessed of sufficient value to lure a man to such risks? With his mind full of this thought his glance dropped to the root of the trunk. A piece of burnt paper, half covered with the trampled mud, caught his eye, and he picked it up and absently glanced at it. He was about to throw it over the fence into the road, when he saw the name of Jacob Shackleton. The next moment his eyes were riveted on the printed lines here and there filled in with writing. He moved so that the full light fell on it through a break in the branches. It was a minute or two before he grasped its real meaning. But he knew the name of Lucy Fraser, too. Mariposa had once told him it had been her mother’s maiden name.