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120 times; and it was only—only because I had been commissioned to find out about you that I was obliged to show so much curiosity."

"I understand," said Eaton quietly. "Your report to your father, I suppose, convinced him that he had been mistaken in thinking he knew my voice."

"No—not that. He knew that he had heard it; for sounds have so much meaning to him that he never neglects or forgets them, and he carries in his mind the voices of hundreds of different people and almost never makes a mistake among them. It did make him surer that you were not any one with whose voice he ought to have been familiar, but only some one whom he had heard say something—a few words or sentences, maybe—under conditions which impressed your voice upon his mind. And he told Mr. Avery so, and that has only made Mr. Avery and the conductor more certain that you must be the—one. And since you will not tell—"

"To tell would only further confirm them—"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean they would be more certain it was I who—" Eaton, as he blundered with the words and checked himself, looked up apprehensively at Avery; but Avery, if he had thought that it was worth while to let this conversation go on in the expectation that Eaton might let slip something which could be used against himself, now had lost that expectation.

"Come, Harry," he said.

Harriet arose, and Eaton got up as she did and stood as she went toward the door.

"You said Mr. Avery and the conductor believe—" he began impulsively, in answer to the something within him which was urging him to know, to make certain,