My employer tossed the note to me indifferently, asking me to see about the engagement of a fresh hand, if necessary. He little guessed what those few simple words meant to two of his staff, or foresaw the tragedy to which they were the prelude. When the dinner hour came I followed Duke out and put the scrap of paper into his hand without a word. He was not unprepared for it, for he already knew, of course, that his worst apprehensions were realized by the non-appearance of the girl at her usual place in the office. He read it in silence, and in silence handed it back to me. His face in twenty-four hours seemed to have grown to be the face of an old man. All its once half-sad, half-humorous thoughtfulness was set into a single hard expression of some dark resolve. “Well,” he said, suddenly, stopping in his walk and facing me, for I still kept pace with him. “What do you intend doing, Duke?” “I have one mission in life, Mr. Trender. Good-afternoon to you.” I fell back and watched him go from me. Maimed as I was myself, how could I in any way help him to cure his crueler hurt? But now began a curious somber struggle of cross purposes. To find out where Jason had sunk his burrow and hidden the spoils of his ugly false sport--there we worked in harness. It was only when the quarry should be run down that we must necessarily disagree as to the terms of its disposition. For myself: A new despairing trouble had been woven into my life by the hand that had already wrought me such evil. Its very touch had, however, made wreck of an impression that had been in a certain sense an embarrassment, and my movements became in consequence less trammeled. Let me explain more definitely, if indeed I can do so and not appear heartless. Dolly, innocent, bewitching and desirable, had so confused my moral ideas as to imbue them with a certain sweet sophistry of love that half-deceived me into a belief in its fundamental soundness. That was done with. Dolly dethroned, earthly, enamored of a brazen idol could be no rival to Zyp. My heart might yearn to her with pity and a deep remorse that it was I who had been the weak, responsible minister of her perversion, but the old feeling was dead, never to be revived. I longed to find her; to rescue her from the black gulf into which I feared she had leaped; to face the villain who had bruised her heart and wrench atonement from him by the throat, as it were. Not less it was my duty to warn him; stand between him, worthless as he was, and the deadly pursuit alert for his destruction. For Duke: I must judge him as he revealed himself to me, and baffle, if possible, the terrible spirit of what I dared not name to myself. Think only that at one wicked blow he was deprived of that whole structure of gentle romance that had saved his moral life from starvation!