Evening star., 1917-04-08

SUSPICION oH tne SANITY Oh your enid.
But the night before his execution Nc
Rae's second personality appeared. Learn
ing from his keeper of the peril in which
he stood, he had written frantic letter
to his wife, telling her of all that he now
remembered. He was sure he had not
killed Yznaga, though he could not say
who had Mrs. Yznaga and Weles-
Hewitt had lied about him. 1t was of
Welles-Hewitt's attentions to his wife
that the Spaniard had been jealous, not
of his. And he had not quaTeled with
Yznaga. The latter had given him "A
quit-claim deed to the mine in return for
the money due him, and this deed McRae
remembered putting in his pocket.
They had played after that, and he had
grown sleepy, as often happened when the
second personality was about to subside.
He had lain down on divan and must
have slept, for he recalled nothing after
that, How he suddenly happened to be
standing over the dead body of Yznaga,
he could only guess. Evidently another's
guilt had been put on him.
He implored his wife to go to the Amer
lean Ambassador with his letter, to get
stay of sentence. Carefully sealing the
letter for fear of it's falling into unfriendly
hands, McRae gave it to the keeper. who
sent it at once to the wife But nothing
resulted from it; there was no stay of
sentence; the wife did not even come
And when the keepers went to get McRae
ready for his execution they found him
sleeping; and when they woke him he did
not remember the night or the letter He
was his normal self again.
Had he not distrusted his lawyer, had
he sent him the letter, had he sent it to
any one rather than to his wife it might
have helped him. When it reached her
she was in delirium brought on by men
tai anguish, and never saw it. Her
brother, believing it to be merely fare
well message, and feeling bitterly toward
the writer for the suffering and disgrace
he had brought upon his family, put it
away. to be given to his sister later.
As soon as possible he took her and her
little boy to the Continent, where he hoped
she might grow strong for the ordeal still
ahead of her. But when the expected
child was born it cost her life. Her babies
We're left in Belgium on farm, the uncle
giving their names as Eric and Fred
Brown. The kindest service he could do
them, he felt, was to cut them off entirely
from their fathers name and history.
But they We're well cared for, and when
they were older he had them brought back
to England to be educated. Not until
after his death, however, when they We're
both grown, did they learn their real name
and their fathers story. In a commune
cation left to them by their uncle they
found the still unopened letter.
WHEN the first shock of the revela-
w ton was over the brothers promised
each other not to rest until they had estab-
lished their fathers innocence and proved
their right to the Rosalba mine.
Eric, the elder more concerned about
his fathers memory than about the
mine, stayed on for time in England,
trying to find people who had known
Roderck McRae and might be able to
tell something about the curious change
that took place in him at times. But
Fred started at once for Mexico with his
wife, a young actress whom he had re-
Gently married. There, under the pretext
Of tn h,,x ha la, bn