“Yes, I will be very grateful. I own I am too much unnerved to attend to it myself,” and he bowed his handsome head upon the desk, a prey to the most harrowing anxiety. With senses strained to their utmost tension, eagerly alert to every sound, his heart aching with the cruelest pain he had ever known, he drooped there in the chair, hearing dully from without the sounds of steps and voices as the men hastened to their gruesome task. There were steps and voices in the room at last, and his father was saying: “The mystery deepens. The body was not there.” “Thank God!” uttered Laurie fervently. Another voice echoed wildly: “Not there!” It was Lelia who had entered just in time for the general’s words. She had a pale, scared look as she repeated: “Not there!” “It is very, very strange,” said the general, and he added: “The well was not deep, and the men had little trouble getting to the bottom. They found nothing there but the rotten boards that had fallen in from the top of the well.” “How very, very strange!” echoed Lelia, in a hollow voice. She sank into a chair, her face white and wild, her form trembling. What had become of Gipsy Darke’s body? Who had dragged it up out of the old well? Where was it now? The general continued: “Yet it is possible there was an effort to throw some one into the well. The grass and earth were broken and trampled roundabout, and there were dark stains upon the leaves, rust-colored like dried blood, as if some sort of a struggle had taken place there. There were some fragments, too, of a white gown fluttering from an old, rusty hook on one side of the well.” “Let me see them?” Laurie asked, and the general placed them in his hand. Some jagged strips of white, dotted muslin, that was all; but there was despair in Laurie Willoughby’s voice as he cried: “I saw Gipsy Darke the afternoon before she was murdered, and she wore a white gown of this exact pattern!” “Then it was not a hoax. Her body must have been thrown into the well, as your anonymous correspondent asserts, but who removed it?” Colonel Ritchie exclaimed, in wonder. Who, indeed? Lelia asked herself that question in dismay, frightened at the hovering clouds of mystery that hung over the tragedy. No one had noticed a dark, picturesque face peering in through the open door while they talked. No one saw the gipsy queen enter the room, and all started when a deep, musical voice exclaimed: “I come to claim the reward, kind gentlemen. I bring news of Gipsy Darke!” Lelia screamed in affright: “Go away, you horrible old hag!” “Hush, my dear!” said the general, rebukingly; and the woman continued: “The reward is mine! I can lead you to Gipsy Darke, who is safe at the gipsy camp!” Lelia clung entreatingly to Laurie’s arm, crying: “Do not listen to this miserable impostor, dear Laurie. She is only telling you falsehoods to extort money from you! Gipsy Darke is certainly dead, there can be no doubt of it!”