The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-01-05

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 East Side The man described himself as an artist and the two women as his sisters. There, cut off voluntarily from all his old connections, shut out from all his old sources of income, Waltei Hartight obtained work under an as- sumed name. Thenceforth he and Marion toiled for the hare means oi existence, sustained by the dual mis- sion of nursing Laura back to heAlth and strength and the determination to expose. unaided. the plot that had robbed her of her fortune and even her Identity.
 They combined and <set aside their small private fortunes for the work and lived vigorously on Walters small earnings. for they found at once that they were facing long fight. Their
 old lawyer, secretly approached. could give them no hope. He had not seen Laura in years. He pointed out that with Mir. Fairlie's eyidencs against them the task was hopeless, Indeed he himself inclined to believe, Marian and Hartright the dupes of mad wo- mans delusion--dupes whom the courts of law would be more inclined to look upon as calculating agents.
 When Walter Hartight reported this to Marion, he said: There is only one hope. It iS in the secret that Anne
 Catherick and her mother knew. If
 it's betrayal means ruin to Sir Perciyai,
 its knowledge will give us club to
 force confession of the plot from him.
 Acting on this conviction. he sought
 out Mrs. Clements. She told him all
 she knew. Mrs. Catherick and she nad
 been neighbors twenty-two years ago
 in Old welmingham. wh ere Mrs. Cath
 ercik's husband was parish clerk. He
 had left her suddenly after discovering that she had held several secret meet
 tngs with Sir Percival Clyde in the
 vestry of the church. About the same time Anne was born. and Mrs. Clements had nursed her and gradually come to look on her almost as her own dough- ter. as her mother seemed to>hate her.
 With this meagre information he hurried to old welmingham. From Mrs Cathericlx he >elicite& nothing. His other inquiries nfthe town were equally fruitless He learned nothing to hint what the secret could be--nothing ex- cept this: that 1t had something to do with happening in those far-off days in the vestrv.
 Feeling himself against dead wall, Hartright sought out the old parish clerk who had taken Catherick's place
 when that man left the country after the scandal. The talkative old fellow cheerfully showed Hartright every thing, including the great church reg ister. and the artist st once looked through the entries under the years that would about correspond with Air PerciyaPs birth. After long search, his eye was caught by an entry crowd ed in the most peculiar and suspicious way into a tiny space at the bottom of the page. It recorded the marriage of Cecilia Jane Blister to Sir Felix Clyde.
 When the old clerk put the register away again. Hartright remarked on the insecure place in which 1t was old lock and surrounded by the ac- cumulated litter of a century.
 "Ay. ay." said the old man, "our old vestry counsel used to worry about that ,too And he kept an exact copy of 1t in his safe in Knowlesbury. near here. Vey few know of it."
 Hartright saw gleam of hope. If. as he had immediately begun to sus- pect. the entry of the marriage was a forgery. it could be proved from the duplicate register. All the old stories that he had heard about the curious hidden life of Sir PercivaPs parents came back to him. He hastened to It turned out as he had expected. There was no entry of any marriage of Sir Felix Clyde.
 This was the secretl It was in Hart rights hand at last. The disclosure of that secret would prove Sir Percival an llegitimate child and thus strip him | of the estate. The disclosure of the l forgery would send him to prisonI
 He determined to make sure that the l register in the vestry of the church | was put into a safe place at once. Has l lilly he went back to Old Welmingham. | It was dark when he reached the old | clerks house. Together they hurried | To the church. There was a light | within. The door was barred. Almost | 1t the same instant the light changed | to a leaping blaze. A hand within be- | gan to turn the kev. The rusty lock | refused to obey. The hidden man | threw himself against the mighty door. | Tn vain! The blaze grew. In another | the whole vestry combustible IS finder. was a mass of fire. Scream | after scream came from within. Then | all was still save for the roar of the | lame.
 When the firemen at last ventured to enter they found the terribly burned | body of a man lying face down in a corner. It was Sir Percival Clyde.
 The next day Mrs. Catherick con- fessed that this was indeed the secret. Sir Percival's parents never had been married and she had been bribed by him to steal her husbands keys and to help him make the forged entry.
 And now that the Secret was learned at last, it was useless!
 But here Chance-blind. inscrutable chance-was to step in and complete