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168 hope really wanted to marry him—that she had said so a score of times"

"The scoundrel! He tried to hypnotize her!"

"I know all that as well as you do, Dick. Well, he said she wanted to marry him, but that her daughter wouldn't let her, being influenced by you and the Lanings. He wanted me to aid him in getting Mrs. Stanhope away from Cedarville, and he said that as soon as they were married he would give me five thousand dollars for helping him to get her."

"Dan!"

"It is true, every word of it. I pumped him all I could, just to get the details of his plot. But he wouldn't give me the details—in fact, I don't think he had the details worked out. When, at last, I flatly refused to assist him he went off the maddest man you ever saw. He warned me not to say a word to anybody, stating that if I did, he would put the police on my track on some old charge. But I made up my mind that I would write to you, and I'd write to Mr. Laning, too—he being Mrs. Stanhope's near relative."

"Where did he go to?" asked Sam.

"I didn't see him the next day, until late in the evening. Then I was over to Grapeton, to see a jeweler there, and when I was coming away an automobile passed me driven by a fellow in a