Ashton-Kirk, Secret Agent. John Thomas McIntyre

old French woman paid no attention to it. That she addressed him by his first name indicated that she felt no sense of inferiority. Indeed, as Ashton-Kirk regarded her, he detected a look of contempt upon her severe face.

      "No," she answered, "there is no service to-night, as you know very well. I came to speak of Drevenoff."

      A peculiar look came into the eyes of the secret agent; it was as though he were groping about for something hidden away in his memory; then like a flash, recollection seemed to come.

      "Well, what of him?" asked Dr. Morse.

      "He is no better. Even now while he clips the hedges, he shakes with cold; again he burns."

      The physician gestured impatiently. Arising he went to a small cabinet and took out a jar partly filled with whitish pills. While he was so engaged, Warwick whispered to Ashton-Kirk.

      "Don't wonder at Nanon's manner. You know I'd told you she'd been in the family for years—before the doctor was born. He has the bad taste to sneer at her religion; and I really think that she considers him somehow evilly possessed. It's a sort of truce between them."

      Dr. Morse placed some of the pellets in an envelope upon which he scrawled some lines.

      "Tell him to take these," he said, handing them to the old woman. "The directions are on the envelope."

      "I hope it is nothing serious," said his niece.

      "He needs some quinine, that is all," returned the physician.

      Old Nanon moved toward the door. Her withered, large veined right hand hung at her side; Ashton-Kirk noted her dart a sidelong glance toward Morse; then the bony forefinger made a rapid sign of the cross between them.

      And so the door closed behind her.