Mr. Shelton's first impulse, after his interesting interview with Mrs. Mason, had been to rush into town, secure a squad of police, and make an immediate raid upon the house of which he had heard such suspicious tales.

Had he obeyed this hasty prompting of his mind, all would have gone well, and this story of mine might have been concluded in a very few more chapters.

But the famous detective in his eventful career had usually found it advantageous to think twice before he acted.

He did so in this case, and his second thought resulted briefly in this: He did not consider that he had as yet sufficient to warrant him in taking the step he at first proposed to himself.

He had no actual grounds for suspicion except the fact that Doctor Pratt and Harold Colville had entered the house, and remained there a seemingly rather long time for a professional call from a busy physician whose time was limited.

Mrs. Mason's information was all gained from the oftentimes worthless gossip of a country neighborhood, and could scarcely be depended on as reliable evidence. The mysterious case of the young girl who had been befriended by the worthy woman might have no connection with the old house and its inhabitants as he had hastily concluded at first.

Considering all the circumstances, the cautious detective determined to wait before taking any decided step, and in the meantime to learn more of the mysterious house if possible.

His pursuit of Pratt and Colville in the next few days took him in entirely different directions, but resulted in nothing satisfactory.

In the meantime Mrs. Mason's gossip about the old house and its wicked inhabitants haunted him persistently. He could not rid himself of the thought. It abode with him by day, and in his sleep assumed the guise of night-mare. The old house actually preyed upon him. After a few days of this troubled thinking he came to a firm determination.

"I will go out there and make some plausible excuse for entering, if I can possibly do so," he said, to himself, "and once inside, I will try to find out whether there is ready ground for suspicion and inquiry."

His mind was relieved when he had resolved upon his course. Accordingly, he mounted his black horse and set out that very evening on his quest. He felt disappointed when he passed the tiny cottage of Mrs. Mason and saw the door closed. He missed the pleasant face from the doorway, but the evening was quite cool, and the good soul was, no doubt, knitting inside by her lonely hearthstone.

Within half a mile of his destination he encountered a lady walking rapidly in the dusty road. She was graceful in figure, fashionable in dress, but her thickly-veiled face gave no hint of her identity. The detective looked after her with no little curiosity.

"That is not the sort of woman one expects to see walking alone in this vicinity," he thought. "She has the proud air and step of a fashionable New York lady. And she does not wish to be recognized, else why that thick veil?"

He turned in the saddle and looked after her again. The tall figure of the graceful lady was rapidly receding from sight around the bend in the road.

"Some intrigue is on foot," he laughed to himself, as he rode on. "These fashionable ladies sometimes find time hanging heavy on their hands, and—well, 'Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.'"

Thus soliloquizing, he found himself in front of the old house which had lately occupied so many of his leisure moments of thought.

He dismounted, fastened his horse, and laid his hand on the heavy gate, peering cautiously inside before entering, being mindful of Mrs. Mason's report of the bloodhound.

"The hound is probably chained up," he thought, after a careful reconnoissance. "Of course they would not allow such a dangerous beast to run at large in the daytime. Now, I must bethink me of my excuse, for I am about to storm the castle of the formidable ogres."

He advanced up the path to the door which, greatly to his surprise, stood slightly ajar.

"I should have thought these reputed misers would keep a locked door to their house," he said to himself, with unconscious disappointment. "I dare say they will prove to be quite ordinary people after all."

He proceeded to rap lightly on the door, then waited a little for a response from within.

No one came to answer his knock. He repeated it once or twice loudly with a like result.

"Are they all dead or asleep, or gone away?" said he, jestingly to himself, as he pushed the door boldly open and looked into the hall.

He saw nothing in the hall but a thin, blue volume of smoke that was pouring out of an open doorway on the right. With a bound he sprang inside and looked into the room.

A horrible sight met his startled eyes as soon as they became accustomed to the cloud of smoke that slowly rose over every thing.

Inside the doorway, at his feet, lay the dead body of an old woman, her aged features distorted and drawn as if by her dying agonies. Near the stove lay another horrible corpse, that of an old and deformed man.

The flooring in front of the stove had become ignited from the brands scattered over it, and was slowly burning through. The clothing of the man had caught fire and every shred was burned off of him, while his charred and frying flesh sent forth a sickening smell. The table with its unfinished repast stood in the center of the room. Several dishes had been knocked off in the furious fight of the old couple, and lay shattered in fragments on the floor. Chairs were overturned and gave silent evidence of the struggle that had gone on so lately in the now silent and deserted room. The detective stood as if rooted to the spot in a trance of horror.

He roused himself at last as he saw what headway the flames were making, like one starting from a dreadful dream.

"Heavens!" he cried out, "this is terrible. Murder and arson have both been committed here!"

He looked about him. Two buckets of water stood on a rude plank shelf. He took them down and poured the water over the burning body of the man, then dashed out into the yard where he remembered he had seen a well as he came in.

He filled the two buckets, carried them in, and poured the contents over the fire. Again and again he repeated this operation till the smoldering fire was quite extinguished, and he stood, weary and perspiring, looking at the dismal scene.

"Well, what next?" he asked himself. "I suppose I ought to go into town and bring the coroner; but first I believe I will explore this horrible den. What if the body I have sought so long should lie hidden in this dreadful lazar house."

He went out into the hall and looked down its narrow length. Three doorways opened into as many rooms. The handles yielded to his touch, and the door of each swung open readily, but the rooms were empty, dark and cobwebbed.

Dust lay thick upon the floor, showing that they had long been untenanted. With a sigh of disappointment he closed them again, and stood contemplating the stairway.

"Better luck in the upper regions, perhaps," he thought. "I wonder if I dare venture up there? Surely I can encounter nothing more fearful than I have seen below."

Slowly, and with some apprehension, he mounted the stairs, not knowing what to expect, and thinking it possible that he might encounter some further dreadful spectacle.

At the top of the stairs he found himself in a narrow passage-way on which three doors opened. He advanced to the first door and tried it.

It yielded easily to his touch, and swung open. He entered and looked about him.

There was nothing suspicious here. It was evidently the sleeping apartment of the two dead people below who would never need it more.

A bed and two chairs constituted the sole furnishing. Some cheap articles of feminine apparel hung upon pegs against the wall, together with one or two rusty old coats and a pair of pants that doubtless belonged to the man he had seen below.

"There is nothing hidden here," thought Mr. Shelton, leaving it and entering the next room.

This room was similar to the first one. A bed and several chairs were all it contained. A single article of feminine apparel hung against the wall.

It was a dress of summer blue, and made in a more fashionable style than the one which he had seen in the adjoining room.

Like a flash he remembered that Mrs. Mason had told him, when describing the appearance of the girl she had befriended, that she wore a "morning dress of a light-blue color, and fashionably made."

"Great Heavens!" he thought, "is it possible that the poor creature escaped from this very house? If so, then she was recaptured and brought back, for here hangs the dress that Mrs. Mason described. My God! what has become of the wearer! Has some fearful fate befallen her?"

Echo only answered him as he sat down trembling with excitement.

He was here in the room where sweet Lily Lawrence had dragged out weary months of captivity, sickness and sorrow; where her pure cheeks had burned at insult and wrong, where she had suffered the pangs of hunger and cold until her weakened frame had almost succumbed to the grim destroyer, death.

But it was silent and deserted now. The dead ashes strewed the hearth, the empty robe hung against the wall, and the cold October wind sighing past the iron-barred window did not whisper of the tender heart that had ached so drearily within.

"This has been a prison for some poor soul," Mr. Shelton said aloud as he noticed the iron bars that guarded the window.

He went out shuddering as if with cold, and advanced to the next room.

The door was locked, but the key had been left upon the outside.

He turned it hastily and stepped over the threshold, half-expecting to find some poor creature incarcerated within.

But silence and gloom greeted him here also.

The room was bare and dreary as the ones he had quitted. A bed and a chair comprised its furniture, and heavy bars of iron secured the solitary window.

"What a horrible prison house," he exclaimed. "And what dreadful deeds of darkness have perhaps been committed within these old walls."

He went to the window and peered out through the heavy bars at the tangled garden. It was faded and dying now, and the russet leaves of autumn strewed the deserted paths.

"My God, what was that?" he exclaimed with a violent start.

A strange sound had grated upon his ears—the distinct clank of a heavy chain and the smothered moan of a human voice.

Involuntarily he looked downward and saw a trap-door in the middle of the room.

"Now some new discovery of human misery," thought the detective as he advanced and pushed the sliding door backward.

A dark and narrow stairway was disclosed. He descended it quickly and entered the empty room beyond.

A feeling of disappointment struck him as he entered the deserted, cobwebbed dungeon, but guided by the sound of faint, low moans he advanced across the floor and opened the opposite door to the one by which he had entered.

Here he paused and swept his hand across his brow, as though to dispel a mist that had risen before his shrinking vision.

There before his eyes, extended on her low cot bed, with the horrible strap and chain about her waist fastened to the iron staple in the floor, with her hungry black eyes glaring on him from her skeleton face, lay poor Fanny Colville in all her abject wretchedness.

"My God!" exclaimed Mr. Shelton, "horrors upon horrors accumulate!"