On second reading, a great horror filled her heart. Jack, her bright, handsome, life-loving Jack was to die, and die such a death! Hope, justice, compassion, Providence all seemed swept away before the appalling, inevitable doom. Murderer! Oh, it was impossible, unbearable, damnable to call him that, one who so loved life himself that he had ever been tender of the well-being of every living thing around him; even the insects and flowers he would not crush beneath his feet! Many a time in his walks, he would call out to Merry to step carefully because of some little insect in their path, and he would add that their existence was so short that they should be allowed to get all they could out of it by the stronger and more fortunate possessors of life. Sometimes, when she was picking wild flowers rather carelessly, he would say, "Do not take more than you really need, dear, for it is a shame to cut their little lives short unless you can enjoy them," and he would always seem anxious to assure himself that the very last one was safely placed in water where there would be no fear of its fading through carelessness.

Now that strong, virile, splendid body was to be snatched from the beautiful, sunny world, shocked by a relentless current into cold, lifeless

clay, and flung to the earth, despoiled and dishonoured. Oh, dear God, it would be murder, cold-blooded, cruel murder, to do such a deed!

Muriel did not sit dazed and stunned for long; nor did she fling herself down in an abandonment of grief and shed unavailing tears. She was lashed to action by the news. One thought and purpose stood out clear and urgent in her mind; it was the necessity to go to her lover, to save him, with the least possible delay. She and she alone could tell the story of that burned letter. She would give the testimony that he needed, explain the mystery of the knife, and then, surely prison bars would open and he would step forth, vindicated.

CHAPTER VIII

PROMPT ACTION

URIEL DEAN could not get into touch

MUR

with her father in the hour of her great anxiety. He was travelling and for a couple of days his address would be uncertain. She had never made confidantes of her younger sisters and at this moment of decision she had to rely on herself alone. The friends and relatives to whom she might have turned would have made countless objections to her plans and would doubtless have placed innumerable obstacles in her path. She was, fortunately, very self-reliant in hours of stress. She had travelled enough on the Continent to have an independence of action and judgment that would stand her in good stead. Of course, in such journeys she had always had a chaperon or maid, but she argued that many a girl at her age who was forced to earn her living as governess, nurse, or companion, had to make journeys alone. Many of these were young and

attractive, and had been carefully nurtured, and yet they faced the world bravely, and their own modest conduct proved their protection. She did not fear any danger or unpleasantness that might attend her journey, but she did dread with a sinking of the heart the possible notoriety that would be hers when she reached her lover's side. Thinking of her relatives' criticisms, of her father's position, of the letters of censure and sympathy that would flood his mail from clerical associates and family connections, she determined that she would travel under another name and appear in America not as Miss Dean but as Miss Worthington. She had a right to use this, her second baptismal name. She would only have to drop the Dean and it did not seem to her like taking a fictitious pseudonym to thus lose her identity.

There was a train leaving for London in two hours and that time sufficed to pack two steamer trunks and a suit-case, to write her plans to her father, and to leave a good-bye to the family, mentioning only that she was called to town and her visit might be a lengthy one.

On reaching London, she went first to her bankers. Fortunately she had money in her own right, having inherited a small fortune from a great-uncle who had been deeply attached to her

when she was a child. She drew one hundred pounds, and arranged for a letter of credit for twice that sum on a New York bank.

The taxi she had taken whirled her quickly from the bank to the steamship company's offices and she found on inquiry that within a few hours a train left to carry passengers to Fishguard, to intercept the boat which was starting that day from Liverpool. After securing her stateroom, she telephoned to Sir Jeffrey Dean, to ask if she could see him alone at luncheon. Next to her father, the dearest and nearest influence in her life was that of the great surgeon. Some people thought him severe and unapproachable; others spoke of him as so absorbed in his life-work as to be remote from the ordinary interests of life; but a strange absent-mindedness and concentration of thought really covered a most generous and affectionate nature. Muriel had found her way to his innermost heart, and even in babyhood, if her father were not at hand, Uncle Jeff was always her city of refuge in trouble and the sharer of her joys and triumphs on happier days.

It was a great relief to hear over the wire, not only a cordial greeting but the assurance that she could claim him for the lunch hour. She asked him to take her to some quiet restaurant, where they