Mr. Harper shook his head, but there was a restrained excitement in his manner which was not altogether the reflection of that which dominated Ransom, and the latter, observing it, leaned across the table till their faces almost touched.

“Do you guess my thought?” he whispered.  “Look at me and tell me if you guess my thought.”

The lawyer hesitated, eying well the trembling lip, the changing color, the wide-open, deeply flushed eyes so near his own; then with a slow smile of extraordinary subtlety, if not of comprehension, answered in a barely audible murmur: 

“I think I do.  I may be mad, but I think I do.”

The other sank back with a sigh charged with what the lawyer interpreted as relief.  Mr. Harper reseated himself, and for a moment neither looked at the other, and neither spoke; it would almost seem as if neither breathed.  Then, as a bird, deceived by the silence, hopped to the window sill and began its cheep, “cheep,” Mr. Ransom broke the spell by saying in low but studiously business-like tones: 

“Have you thought it worth while to study the ground under her window or anywhere else for footprints?  It might not be amiss; what do you think about it?”

“Let us go,” readily acquiesced the lawyer, rising to his feet with an honest show of alacrity; “after which I must telegraph to New York.  I was expected back to-day.”

“I know it; but your duties there will keep; these here cannot.  Your hand on the promise that you will respect my secret till—­well, till I can assure you that my intuitions are devoid of any real basis.”

The lawyer’s palm met his; then they started to go out; but before they had passed the door, Mr. Ransom came back, and lifting the comb from the table he put it in his pocket.  As he did this, his eye flashed sidewise on the other.  There were strange hints and presentiments in it which brought the color to the usually imperturbable lawyer’s cheek.

In going out they passed the office-door.  A dozen men were hanging about, smoking and talking.  Among them was a countryman who had just swallowed, open-mouthed, the story of the past night’s tragedy.  He was now speaking out his own mind concerning it, and this is what these two heard him say as they went by: 

“Do you know what strikes me as mighty strange?  That they should clear that stone of the name of Anitra just in time to put Georgian’s in its place.  I call that peculiar, I do.”

The lawyer and the husband exchanged a glance.

“Mrs. Ransom had a deep mind,” the lawyer remarked, as the door slammed behind them.  “She apparently thought of everything.”

Ransom, directing a look down the street towards the factories and the roaring mill-stream, uttered a shuddering sigh.

“They are still searching,” said he.  “But they will never find her.  They will never find her.”

The lawyer pulled him away.