He was certainly crazy; there could be no doubt of it; and next morning, when Mr. St. Claire entered his office, he found Frank Tracy waiting there to consult him with regard to the legal steps necessary to procure his brother’s incarceration in a lunatic asylum.

Arthur St. Claire’s face wore a grave, troubled look as he listened, for he remembered a time, years before, when he, too, had been interested in the lunatic asylum at Worcester, where a beautiful young girl, his wife, had been confined.  She was dead now, and the Florida roses were growing over her grave, but there were many sad, regretful memories connected with her short life, and not the least sad of these were those connected with the asylum.

’If it were to do over again I would not put her there, unless she became dangerous,’ he had often said to himself, and he said much the same thing to Frank Tracy with regard to his brother.

’Keep him at home, if possible.  Do not place him with a lot of lunatics if you can help it.  No proof he is crazy because he smells everything.  My wife does the same.  Her nose is over the registers half the time in winter to see if any gas is escaping from the furnace.  And as to this Gretchen, it is possible there was some woman with him on the ship, or in New York, and he may be a little muddled there.  You can inquire at the hotel where he stopped.’

This was Mr. St. Claire’s advice, and Frank acted upon it, and took immediate steps to ascertain if there had been a lady in company with his brother at the Brevoort House, where he had stopped, or if there had been any one in his company on the ship, which was still lying in the dock at New York.  But there no one had been with him.  Arthur Tracy alone was registered among the list of passengers, and only Arthur Tracy was on the books at the hotel.  He had come alone, and been alone on the sea and at the hotel.

Gretchen was a myth, or at least a mystery, though he still persisted that she would arrive with every train from Boston; and for nearly a week they humored him, and the carriage went to meet her, until at last there seemed to dawn upon his mind the possibility of a mistake, and when the carriage had made its twentieth trip for nothing, and Mr. St. Claire, who was standing by him on the platform when the train came up and brought no Gretchen, said to him: 

‘She did not come.’

‘I am afraid she will never come,’ he answered, sadly.  ’No, she will never come.  There has been some mistake.  She will never come.  Poor little Gretchen!’ Then, after a moment he added, but there is a Gretchen, and I wrote to her to join me in Liverpool, and I thought she did and was with me on the ship and in the train, but sometimes, when my head is so hot, I get things mixed, and am not sure but—­’ and he looked wistfully in his companion’s face, while his voice trembled a little.  ’Don’t let them shut me up; I have a suspicion that they will try it, but it will do no good.  I was in an asylum nearly three years near Vienna; went of my own accord, because of that heat in my head.’