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No sooner was the post than Manston stalked back to the vicarage letter-box by keeping inside a fence, and thus avoiding the village; arrived here, he took the key from his pocket, where it had been concealed all the time, and abstracted Owen's letter This done, he turned towards ho himself to his ordinary appearance as he neared the quarter in which he was known

An hour and half's sharp walking brought him to his own door in Knapwater Park

2 EIGHT O'CLOCK AM

Seated in his private office he wetted the flap of the stolen letter, and waited patiently till the adhesive gum could be loosened He took out Edward's note, the accounts, the rosebud, and the photographs, regarding them with the keenest interest and anxiety

The note, the accounts, the rosebud, and his own photograph, he restored to their places again The other photograph he took between his finger and thurate There he held it for half-a-reat risk to run, even for such an end,' he ht idea, he ju up an album of portraits, which lay on the table, he searched for three or four likenesses of the lady who had so lately displaced Cytherea, which were interspersed aarded them They were taken in different attitudes and styles, and he coly with that he held in his hand One of the that abstracted froeneral tone, size, and attitude, he selected fro some water into a plate, he set the two portraits afloat upon it, and sitting down tried to read

At the end of a quarter of an hour, after several ineffectual atteraph would peel from the card on which it was inal likeness and the recent card, stuck upon the original card the recent likeness from the album, dried it before the fire, and placed it in the envelope with the other scraps

The result he had obtained, then, was this: in the envelope were noo photographs, both having the sarapher's name on the back and consecutive numbers attached At the bottom of the one which showed his own likeness, his own name ritten down; on the other his wife's name ritten; whilst the central feature, and wholereferred, the likeness of a lady ed