“It isn’t necessary to overwork my imagination,” I said, with a little bitterness.  I had been a pretty girl, but work and worry—­

“Now you are going to New York very soon, and in the meantime you have cut yourself off from all your people.  You have no one but this man.  What would you do?  Where would you go?”

“How old was the girl?”

“Nineteen.”

“I think,” I said slowly, “that if I were nineteen, and in love with a man, and hiding, I would hide as near him as possible.  I’d be likely to get a window that could see his going out and coming in, a place so near that he could come often to see me.”

“Bravo!” he exclaimed.  “Of course, with your present wisdom and experience, you would do nothing so foolish.  But this girl was in her teens; she was not very far away, for he probably saw her that Sunday afternoon, when he was out for two hours.  And as the going was slow that day, and he had much to tell and explain, I figure she was not far off.  Probably in this very neighborhood.”

During the remainder of that morning I saw Mr. Holcombe, at intervals, going from house to house along Union Street, making short excursions into side thoroughfares, coming back again and taking up his door-bell ringing with unflagging energy.  I watched him off and on for two hours.  At the end of that time he came back flushed and excited.

“I found the house,” he said, wiping his glasses.  “She was there, all right, not so close as we had thought, but as close as she could get.”

“And can you trace her?” I asked.

His face changed and saddened.  “Poor child!” he said.  “She is dead, Mrs. Pitman!”

“Not she—­at Sewickley!”

“No,” he said patiently.  “That was Jennie Brice.”

“But—­Mr. Howell—­”

“Mr. Howell is a young ass,” he said with irritation.  “He did not take
Jennie Brice out of the city that morning.  He took Alice Murray in
Jennie Brice’s clothing, and veiled.”

Well, that is five years ago.  Five times since then the Allegheny River, from being a mild and inoffensive stream, carrying a few boats and a great deal of sewage, has become, a raging destroyer, and has filled our hearts with fear and our cellars with mud.  Five times since then Molly Maguire has appropriated all that the flood carried from my premises to hers, and five times have I lifted my carpets and moved Mr. Holcombe, who occupies the parlor bedroom, to a second-floor room.

A few days ago, as I said at the beginning, we found Peter’s body floating in the cellar, and as soon as the yard was dry, I buried him.  He had grown fat and lazy, but I shall miss him.

Yesterday a riverman fell off a barge along the water-front and was drowned.  They dragged the river for his body, but they did not find him.  But they found something—­an onyx clock, with the tattered remnant of a muslin pillow-slip wrapped around it.  It only bore out the story, as we had known it for five years.