Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1912-06-26
CHAPTER II.
Our First Clue.

Isn't it strange in this world of
ours how the commonplace follows on
the terrible, how the usual and the I'M
usual intermingle, how the clock ticks
on when the whole universe seems to
be tumbling about our heads! In one
Of the rooms upstairs lay Katharine,
still unconscious, with a doctor and a
nurse constantly at her side. The bull
let had been removed, and while it
had penetrated the brain some slight
distance, Doctor Wilcox said there was
just a chance-the barest chance-that
she might recover. 1t might, however,
be hours, he explained, before she re-
gained consciousness-if she ever did,
In another Of the rooms lay General
Parrish, more dead than alive. Paraly-
sis had deadened his limbs and tied
his tongue. Only his eyes seemed
alert Most Of the time since the
stroke had felled him he had been
slumbering heavily, not with the sleep
Of health or WEAKNESS but with the
coma of disease. In the moments
when he was awake and seemed con-
scious his eyes still had the look Of
terror that we had seen just before he
was stricken. Coupled with this look
of fear was an indefinable expression
Of entreaty, as if there was something
he would ask and could not Anxious
as Louise and l were to learn what it
was that was troubling him, the doctor
forbade our making any effort to do
so, and made us leave the room,
where he had put second nurse in
charge.
While the hustle of caring for the
two stricken ones lasted there was
little time for thought, and / was glad
for the activity that kept Louise's
mind distracted. Just at the moment
when it seemed that everything had
but the anxious waiting-waiting for
the worst-the butler had tiptoed in to
summon us to dinner. Bravely, at
first, Louise and / made pretense of
eating, each trying to encourage the
other, but the unforgetable events of
the afternoon, the missing faces at the
table and the sorrow that filled us both
chairs together, we discussed in whis-
pers the battling mystery of Kath-
arine's attempted suicide and her ia
theirs strange terror.
On the table before us lay the scrap
Of yellow paper, the sight of which
had so agitated General Parrish AS
soon as he had been carried into his
own rooms l had fastened to rescue it
from the floor. felt that, insignificant
as it appeared, it must have some i'm
portant connection with the events Of
the afternoon. Yet as Louise and l
puzzled over it, there seemed nothing
sinister in the fragments of sentences
that the flames had left all but indie
cipherable
The paper, of a peculiarly yellowish
tint, was hardly more than tw. square
inches, the torn corner of folded let
ter. On it we could make out these
words:
ba
used SO
a sister
seemed inevita
and disgrace ali
by accident lie
make good
AS we studied the bit Of type-writ-
ing, word by word, we tried to trace
in 1t some hidden meaning, some sim
lister warning, something or anything
that would connect it with poor Kath-
arine's mental distress and her ia
theirs poignant terror. That the let
ter Of which this was part had been
in Katharine's possession was evident
from the place where 1 had picked up
the fragment. It was equally certain
that it had been her purpose to de-
stroy 1t. On the other hand, General
Parrish, too, must have known of the
existence of this letter, else why did
he show such terror at the mere sight
of a scrap of it? 1t must have been
part Of some document that had made
a vivid impression on his mind More
than likely, We felt, whatever the let
ter was, it had played some part in
the quarrel between Katharine and
her father the afternoon before she
dismissed Hugh Crandall.
We ran over all the words we could
think IF that begin "b-a," trying to fit
one to the phrases foIlowing-back,
bar, ban, bank, bankruptcy, basin, bar
rel, barren, battle-there were too
many Of them. We gave it up and
passed on to the next phrase, used
Sc" 1t proved equally puzzling. We
could make nothing out of it, but the
third line at least was definite enough
for discussion.