answered, with a smile; "and we shall come across some worthy country
squire, possessed of pretty daughters, who will be delighted to find so
cheap and sweet a nest for his birds, when they want to be near London."

"I wish sir," I said, "you would see Colonel Morris yourself. I am quite
certain that every statement he made to me is true in his belief. I do
not say, I believe him; I only say, what he told me justifies the
inference that some one is playing a clever game in River Hall," and
then I repeated in detail all the circumstances Colonel Morris had
communicated to me, not excepting the wonderful phenomenon witnessed by
Mr. Morris, of a man walking through a closed door.

Mr. Craven listened to me in silence, then he said, "I will not see
Colonel Morris. What you tell me only confirms my opinion that we must
fight this question. If he and his witnesses adhere to the story you
repeat, on oath, I shall then have some tangible ground upon which to
stand with Miss Blake. If they do not--and, personally, I feel satisfied
no one who told such a tale could stand the test of cross-examination--we
shall then have defeated the hidden enemy who, as I believe, lurks behind
all this. Miss Blake is right in what she said to you: Robert Elmsdale
must have had many a good hater. Whether he ever inspired that different
sort of dislike which leads a man to carry on a war in secret, and try to
injure this opponent's family after death, I have no means of knowing. But
we must test the matter now, Patterson, and I think you had better call
upon Colonel Morris and tell him so."

This service, however, to Mr. Craven's intense astonishment, I
utterly declined.

I told him--respectfully, of course: under no possible conditions of