"Have I not said that I do not know? Do you not believe me? Do you think me as blind to-day to truth and honor as I was six years ago? Have you no idea of repentance and regeneration from sin? You are a detective. Find me that child. You shall have money--hundreds--thousands--if you can bring me proofs of her being yet alive. If the Hudson has swallowed her--" here his figure rose, dilated and took on a majesty which impressed itself upon me through all my doubts--"I will have vengeance on whoever has thus dared the laws of God and man as I would on the foulest murderer in the foulest slums of that city which breeds wickedness in high places as in low. I lock hands no longer with Belial. Find me the child, or make me at least to know the truth!" There was no doubting the passion which drove these words hot from his lips. I recognized at last the fanatic whom Miss Graham had so graphically described in relating her extraordinary adventure on the bridge; and met him with this one question, which was certainly a vital one: "Who dropped a shoe from the little one's closet, into the water under the dock? Did you?" "No." His reply came quick and sharp. "But," I insisted, "you have had something to do with this child's disappearance." He did not answer. A sullen look was displacing the fire of resolve in the eyes I saw sinking slowly before mine. "I will not acknowledge it," he muttered; adding, however, in what was little short of a growl: "Not yet, not till it becomes my duty to avenge innocent blood." "You foretold the date." "Drop it." "You were in league with the abductor," I persisted. "I declare to your face, in spite of all the vaunted scruples with which you seek to blind me to your guilt, that you were in league with the abductor, knowing what money Mrs. Ocumpaugh would pay. Only he was too smart for you, and perhaps too unscrupulous. You would stop short of murder, now that you have got religion. But his conscience is not so nice and so you fear--" "You do not know what I fear and I am not going to tell you. It is enough that I am conscious of my own uprightness and that I say, Find the child! You have incentive enough." It was true and it was growing stronger every minute. "Confine yourself to such clues as are apparent to every eye," he now admonished me with an eagerness that seemed real. "If they are pointed by some special knowledge you believe yourself to have gained, that is all the better--perhaps. I do not propose to say." I saw that he had uttered his ultimatum. "Very good," said I. "I have, nevertheless, one more question to ask which relates to those very clues. You can not refuse to answer it if you are really desirous of aiding me in my efforts. Where did you first come upon the wagon which you followed so many hours in the belief that it held Gwendolen Ocumpaugh?"