the name before; but it was not completely strange to him. He could define the excitement it stirred only in that way.
He went back to the Morris chair; his socks were nearly dry, and he put on his shoes. He got up and paced about. Sherrill had believed that here in this house Benjamin Corvet had left—or might have left—a memorandum, a record, or an account of some sort which would explain to Alan, his son, the blight which had hung over his life. Sherrill had said that it could have been no mere intrigue, no vulgar personal sin; and the events of the night had made that very certain; for, plainly, whatever was hidden in that house involved some one else seriously, desperately. There was no other way to explain the intrusion of the sort of man whom Alan had surprised there an hour ago.
The fact that this other man searched also did not prove that Benjamin Corvet had left a record in the house, as Sherrill believed; but it certainly showed that another person believed—or feared—it. Whether or not guilt had sent Benjamin Corvet away four days ago, whether or not there had been guilt behind the ghost which had "got Ben," there was guilt in the big man's superstitious terror when he had seen Alan. A bold, powerful man like that one, when his conscience is clear, does not see a ghost. And the ghost which he had seen had a bullet hole above the brows!
Alan did not flatter himself that in any physical sense he had triumphed over that man; so far as it had gone, his adversary had had rather the better of the battle; he had endeavored to stun Alan, or perhaps do worse than stun; but after the first grapple, his pur-
