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 In this general silence, the grating of wheels on the graveled walk outside the study door sounded loudly.

"Mrs. Burbeck!" exclaimed Hampstead in some surprise. "She never came to me at night before. Finish your dinner, Deputy. If you will excuse me, I must receive one of my parishioners in the study."

"Sorry, but I can't excuse you, Doc," replied Wyatt jocularly; "but if you'll excuse me for just a minute, while I get away with this second piece of loganberry pie, I'll be with you."

"Be with me?" asked the minister, color rising. "Do you mean that you will intrude upon the privacy of an interview with a helpless lady in a wheel chair who comes to see me alone?"

Wyatt's fat cheek was bulging, and there were tiny streams of crimson juice at the corners of the lips; but he interrupted himself long enough to reply bluntly: "I ain't agoin' to let you out of my sight. Orders is orders, that's all I got to say."

"But tell me, Wyatt, who gave you such orders?" queried the minister, with no effort to conceal his irritation.

"Searle. And they were give to him," answered the Deputy phlegmatically, his fat-imbedded eyes intent upon the white and crimson segment of pastry on his plate.

"And who gave such orders to him?" persisted Hampstead.

"If you ask me—" began the Deputy, and then exasperatingly blotted out the possibility of further speech by the transfer of the dripping triangle to his mouth.

"Well, I do ask you," declared the minister curtly.

"He got 'em from Miss Dounay."

"And is that woman running the District Attorney's office?" questioned the minister scornfully.

"Search me!" gulped Wyatt, with a shrug of his